Singapore’s luxury hotel, Royal Plaza on Scotts has implemented an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) to streamline financial reporting and budgeting processes.
This allows the hotel to comply with the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry (USALI) - a standardised accounting system for the hotel and lodging industry.
Royal Plaza on Scotts’ financial controller, Thyvoone Hooi told iTnews Asia that the team shortlisted three vendors, and elaborated based on features, functionality, and project costs.
It has replaced manual excel-based workflows with Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM.
With Oracle's solution, the hotel has achieved a 25 percent reduction in reporting time and a 30 percent increase in monthly forecasting accuracy, she added.
According to Hooi, the hotel’s Property Management System and restaurant Point of Sales systems are Oracle products, hence, data integration with Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM was easy.
Tibura, the hotel’s implementation partner, provided a trial of the Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM platform, including Smart View.
This has helped the team gain a comprehensive understanding of the system’s functionality.
Customised reporting and enhanced efficiency
Royal Plaza was using simple excel sheets and formulas for monthly reporting, forecasting, and yearly budgeting, which was manual, time consuming, and prone to human errors.
Internally, the team decided to change accounting practices, and this has led to the plan to invest in a financial reporting and analysis tool.
Now, the hotel compiles worksheets from departments and merges them into reporting formats instantly.
Earlier, the same process took up to two hours and was prone to formula errors during manual compilation.
Hooi said the team taps on the customised report to do monthly recurring checking - Actual vs Budget vs Last Year vs Last Month's Forecast – on Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM.
Previously, it would have taken up to two hours to do variance checks but now the team can do so immediately, she said.
Hooi added that with data extraction via Smart View, the hotel can consolidate data for other reporting usages.
"We were able to complete the entire process with minimal post-implementation support, thanks to the thorough training and resources provided," Hooi said.
This has minimised the need for ongoing external support, she added.
