SUCCES STORIES

Automating income audits, empowering
remote collaboration

At InterContinental Cascais-Estoril, financial and management teams digitise their financial approvals enabling remote collaboration

Situated in a historic town on the Portuguese Riviera, the InterContinental Cascais-Estoril hotel boasts inspiring views over the Atlantic Ocean, combining the heritage of the past with the modernity of the present. True to this philosophy of innovation and forward thinking, the hotel digitised large parts of its financial operations using DocMX.

Challenges

  • Complex paper trail for daily income audits: The luxury hotel generates revenue from many sources, including rooms but also meeting & event facilities, a restaurant and a spa. A dozen of reports pulled from the PMS system required daily auditing and approval, generating a complex paper trail.
  • Time wasted auditing paperwork: “The key pain point that prompted us to implement DocMX was the time wasted auditing all the piles of paper each day”, explains Diogo Gaspar, Income Auditor. In many cases, the team was struggling to approve reports on time, “with papers flying around and sometimes missed” between different teams: night managers, income auditor, director of finance or general manager.
  • Paper waste: printing all this paperwork was a waste, in terms of cost but also in terms of the environmental impact

Solution: digital finance approvals within weeks

The IHG team decided to digitise their financial processes using DocMX, starting with the daily income audit. After discussing best practices and requirements with experienced DocMX consultant, the IHG team outlined their internal processes aligned to global policy. 

The DocMX team then configured the system to pull relevant income transaction reports into one place, from the many different sources such as the PMS, POS, paperwork and even emails. All the information was centralised in a single dashboard, customised for each team member and role.

Within a few days, the handover and training process took place in a live demonstration, where the DocMX team shared tips and tricks to help IHG best benefit from the system. From the beginning to the end of the project, the digitising of daily income audits took only a couple of months, with immediately perceptible benefits.

" I definitely recommend all properties to engage in DocMX to digitise and improve the way you work. You will thank DocMX when you see the full potential of the technology! "
Diogo Gaspar
Income Auditor, IHG

Benefits: significant savings and improved compliance

The IHG team saw significant time & cost savings for the entire team, as well as better compliance:

    • The income reports are 90% automated: the system reconciles and verifies most lines automatically, leaving only exceptions and errors to review manually.
    • DocMX e-forms allow capture and approval of data in a structured digital way, saving time for senior managers and making it impossible to lose information. Reconciliation of financial information like credit card refunds is automated, saving many hours each month to focus on more value add work.
    • The dashboard and workflow in particular bring significant efficiency gains. Several people in the finance and management team review, comment and approve a dozen reports each day, adding supporting information. Everyone is on the same page, knowing what is outstanding at a glance.
    • The audit trail is fully documented for any future external and internal audits. This brings very tangible time and cost savings to the operation, and makes compliance so much easier with less risk of failure.

The team is now able to collaborate remotely, from different offices or even from home. Diogo Gaspar summarised his experience:

With DocMX I was able to do all my job functions remotely, and from home during the pandemic:  I simply login and audit/approve the automated documents within the system. I am able to almost “live chat” with the rest of the team regarding any issues.

The customer support is the best we’ve ever had: you ask and they answer straight away with the solution/help. I’m sure in a near future we will expand our use of DocMX, to further streamline our processes!”

DocMX has been awarded the prestigious Amazon AWS Travel & Hospitality competency. We offer:

    • Robust performance, data security & privacy features powered by Amazon AWS technology (including encryption, back-up and recovery)
    • Cloud hosting with no extra work required from in-house IT teams. 
    • Auditable & traceable: data access limited to relevant personnel, system actions and documents logged, in compliance with ISO 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 free 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.

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

The leading hospitality group in Asia-Pacific centralised their Finance, HR and payroll services into a single SSC in Sydney to service their entire Australian operation.

A top Sydney hotel reduced yearly printing from 3m pages to less than 1 million, providing a better customer experience, saving money and helping the environment.