Success stories:
Building a Shared Services Cluster

Hilton Australia builds a Shared Services Centre to distribute knowledge and reduce overheads across the portfolio

Hilton Australia operates dozens of properties across the region. To benefit from the group’s scale, it was decided to cluster certain back-office services in a single centre of excellence based in Sydney, to service their entire Australian operation.

Challenge

With dozens of properties across the region, various back-office capabilities in Accounting, Finance or Payroll were duplicated, while others were lacking in some locations. Remote locations in particular had a hard time recruiting the right talents to provide all required support services.

Typically manual and paper-heavy processes meant that there was no easy way to provide such support services remotely or from a centralised location.

With different teams and ways of working in each property, processes were not always the most efficient and compliance with certain group-wide policies was a challenge.

Our solution

The DocMX team analysed the existing back-office processes and worked with the client teams to design efficient and future-proof digital processes:

  • It was decided to cluster Finance, HR and Payroll services for all Australian properties into a single centre of excellence based in Sydney
  • Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, HR and Payroll processes were digitised and various steps were automated (e.g. manual input and validation of invoices).
  • All physical paperwork was eliminated in these processes, allowing fully remote collaboration between the properties and the Shared Services Centre
hilton-logo.svg
During the implementation, we found the input of the DocMX team invaluable: they listened to us when needed, but also went their own way and gave advice and thoughts on efficiency improvements.
Boudewijn Kok Auditor, Hilton

Benefits

  • Compliance: finance & HR processes are now managed in line with group policies and current legislation
  • Skills & knowledge distribution: all properties can now benefit from the highest-quality services provided at the group level
  • Overheads efficiencies: the centralisation of services into one team has enabled many savings, reducing duplication and providing better support to properties who need it. With the automation of paper-based, manual and repetitive tasks, staff can focus on value-added tasks rather than admin
  • Collaboration across department silos: with one central information repository, all properties and departments are able to communicate in an efficient way.
  • Data and network security: going paperless with DocMX has given our client the opportunity to improve its document security to ISO-standards compliance. Hilton also benefited from the latest data storage, security and recovery features powered by Amazon AWS – with no major work required from in-house IT teams. 

Learn more about our Shared Services Cluster solutions, or contact us for a demo.

Read more customer success stories:

Read how this prestigious Sydney hotel created more time to maintain 5-star customer services by automating its daily transaction audit process.

Read how Australia’s most prestigious horse racing organisation restructured Accounts Payable handling for its hundreds of suppliers to maintain business continuity.

Read how InterContinental Estoril hotel streamlined its financial operations and enabled seamless and safe collaboration during the social-distancing period.

Read how this top Sydney hotel succeeded in reducing yearly printing volumes from 3 million pages to less than 1 million, providing a better customer experience, saving money and helping the environment.