Success stories:
Building a Hilton 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 various back-office services in a single centre of excellence, 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 hiring the right talents and training them 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.
Extra information queries or issues typically required back-and-forth emailing, phone calls and chase-ups, and caused unnecessary delays. 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.
Paolo Trevisan, Director of Finance at Hilton Cairns, explains: “We used to have issues with document storage and retrieval, with documents going missing from one tray to another, causing actions not being taken. We chose DocMX because this product was the most adaptable to our business needs in hospitality.”
Our solution
DocMX experts collected information from various client teams, analysed the existing back-office processes and collaborated with the Hilton project team 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
- Revenue Auditing, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, HR and Payroll processes were digitised and various steps were automated: manual input, reconciliation, coding, validation of invoices etc.
- All physical paperwork was eliminated in these processes, allowing fully remote collaboration between the properties and the Shared Services Centre
“The implementation of DocMX went great – it’s a very thorough process that complies with the technical requests from the big companies. I couldn’t speak highly enough of the Support team: my most recent issue was resolved within 5 minutes – truly outstanding”, explains Paolo Trevisan.
Zooming in... how does it work?
Accounts Payable: 3-way match
Invoices are sent to DocMX, data is captured with advanced Optical Recognition algorithms, the invoices are coded automatically, reconciled with POs and other data from 3rd party systems, then written directly into the finance system. No more manual input or reconciliation: 70% automated AP processing.
Paperless Night Pack
Rather than printing out daily transaction audit reports, which could reach 900 pages, data is pulled from different sources and reconciled automatically. Management review/approval is done on online dashboards. This resulted in an estimated 40h saved weekly, and an estimated $32,000 saved on pure printing, per property!
e-Forms, faster AR and more
E-forms for expenditure approvals and HR requests, streamlined General Ledger and Journal Vouchers, accelerated Accounts Receivable that allow events/sales/revenue to be processed faster… Many more efficiencies, automating up to 70% of the local “on property” administration.
Benefits
Overheads efficiencies with 1 staff for 3 properties
The centralisation of services into one team enabled many savings, reducing duplication and providing better support to properties who need it. With an estimated 70% of back-office tasks automated, a single person could now service over 3 properties, resulting in significant wage savings, amounting to hundreds of thousands dollars per annum.
Skills sharing & service continuity
All properties are able to benefit from the quality services provided by well-trained specialists at the group level. There is no more single point of failure as team members can take over in case of absence.
Best practices and compliance
Finance & HR processes are now conducted with standardised internal control, in line with best practices and Hilton group policies.
- Printing savings: printing a page costs an estimated $0.1 due to printer leasing, paper, but also archiving and destruction costs. Just with digitising 900-page Night Packs for 12 properties, our customer thus saved an estimated $380,000 per year on printing and improved its environmental footprint.
Collaboration across department silos
With one central repository, all properties and departments are able to easily retrieve information and communicate efficiently. Thanks to the user-friendly and modern interface, the user adoption was quick and did not require much training.
Transparent & auditable
Data access is limited to relevant personnel, all system actions and documents are logged and traceable in compliance with ISO standards for data security. Any approvals are auditable at a later date if needed.
More robust data security & privacy powered by Amazon AWS technology:
- DocMX was awarded the highly selective AWS Travel & Hospitality Competency, in recognition of its deep industry expertise
- High-performing, reliable Cloud solution: with reliable hosting in Amazon’s Australian data centres, the data is always accessible, on a click and with no time lags.
- Data and network security: the hotel benefited from latest data security, encryption, back-up and recovery features from AWS – with no extra work required from in-house IT teams.
- Auditable & traceable: data access restricted, system actions and documents logged, in compliance with ISO27001 standards for data security.
This is just one example of digitisation with DocMX. Click to learn more about our Hospitality solutions, or contact us for a demo.
Read more customer success stories:
Read how the prestigious Sydney hotel created more time to maintain 5-star customer services by automating its daily transaction audit process.
Singapore’s Holiday Inn Orchard City Centre automates income audits and other financial operations to overcome the challenges related to the pandemic, with support from the Singapore Tourism Board.
Read how InterContinental Estoril hotel streamlined its financial operations and enabled seamless and safe collaboration during the social distancing period.
Read how a 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.