Luxury Hotel & Spa Group Modernises and Supercharges Service with Sage Intacct and Percipient
Sage Intacct helps to instil a platform for growth at Exclusive Collection Hotel Group.
About Exclusive Collection
Exclusive Collection is a unique collection of hotels and spas, with a golf club, cookery school and pub thrown in for good measure. Located across the south of England, each of its six destinations offers something different, from ultimate relaxation and well-being retreats to adventurous and experiential country escapes.
Exclusive Collection’s delicious foodie experiences lie at the heart of its ethos, with dining to suit any occasion, including afternoon teas and light and healthy plates, through to hearty dinners and surprise tasting menus, with an array of awards accomplished by its restaurants including 4 AA Rosettes and Michelin stars.
There’s also a wealth of experiences to discover and enjoy across its hotels and hundreds of acres to explore on its grounds.
The Percipient team was nothing short of brilliant, and demonstrated its wealth of experience of working in our industry in the questions they asked, and nuances they explored. They knew what areas we needed to address in terms of both our business dynamics, and regulatory compliance, and our close relationship throughout the process was hugely valuable.
Embracing a Connected Future
In 2020, Exclusive Collection identified a need for a new platform from which to manage its financials. The hotel group had outgrown its Sage 200 package, and the spreadsheets and manual processes which had become necessary to maintain it resulted in significant duplication and repetition. These kinds of inefficiencies were unsustainable for the business and following a demonstration at HOSPACE in 2020, the team selected Sage Intacct to replace the company’s legacy systems.
“From our initial meeting at HOSPACE, we were impressed by the reporting within Sage Intacct, in particular how dashboards could display key insights in an easily digestible way so that non-financial staff could access and use where needed,” comments Christine Davies, Finance Director, Exclusive Collection.
Having gone live in June 2021 following just a 10-week deployment, the system quickly delivered on its promises and Exclusive Collection is already seeing substantial improvements in the way in which the business is run.
“The deployment was incredibly smooth and took just a matter of weeks,” continues Christine. “The Percipient team was nothing short of brilliant and demonstrated its wealth of experience working in our industry in the questions they asked and the nuances they explored. They knew what areas we needed to address in terms of both our business dynamics, and regulatory compliance, and our close relationship throughout the process was hugely valuable.”
Intercompany reporting is straightforward as a result of consolidated accounts, and with just eight key dashboards we can pretty much see a detailed view of the performance of each hotel. The team can now directly compare the P&Ls, activity and performance of all six hotels in real-time, which was impossible to do previously, and is hugely important in terms of understanding where the business is at.
Real-Time Insights, Real World Decision-Making
One area which has been well received across the whole business, not just the finance team, is the way in which reports are available to the senior team. Exclusive Collection’s General Managers can instantly get a view of where the business is at on any given day and can keep drilling down to access more and more detail. As well as being able to view, profit and loss (P&L) and balance sheets, they can view cost centres and departmental results for a given hotel against another in a mere click or two.
“Previously our management accounts would be available 2 weeks after month end, so at times the data was often outdated or irrelevant by the time we could look at it,” Christine explains. “Using Sage Intacct, fully integrated with our property management system (PMS), we can now see what has happened during the previous day, which means we can act on any anomalies or flags instantly, which is crucial in our industry.
“Intercompany reporting is straightforward as a result of consolidated accounts, and with just eight key dashboards we can pretty much see a detailed view of the performance of each hotel. The team can now directly compare the P&Ls, activity and performance of all six hotels in real-time, which was impossible to do previously, and is hugely important in terms of understanding where the business is at.
“This visibility allows us to take a closer look into any area, so if housekeeping costs, for example, are much higher in one property over another, we can investigate why this might be the case. Department heads are using Sage Intacct to raise their own purchase orders, which is a huge benefit, particularly when you consider we have over 2000 suppliers. Previously purchasing was a standalone system so again duplication and time inefficiencies in two systems, together with the incorporation of our document scanning software with Sage Intacct has meant more time saving for accounts. This ability to evaluate insights and make quicker, more informed decisions undoubtedly gives Exclusive Collection a strategic advantage in today’s world.”
As the business grows and evolves, the system means that if we add to our portfolio, or indeed make significant changes in some areas, the insights remain current, and accessible and therefore ensure the best decisions are taken. Sage Intacct allows us to constantly tune into our hotels’ trends and activities, therefore we stand in the best position to ensure that our proposition is aligned fully with our customers.
Keeping Current with One Eye on the Future
“Percipient has proved to be a key business partner in the digitalisation of our financials. Throughout the deployment of Sage Intacct, and beyond, the team has worked with us to understand and refine certain areas, for example, we were able to precode where certain receipts should reside according to whether they were say, Amex, or Mastercard, which has saved us even more time in processing transactions.
“Looking ahead, we’re keen to continue to build on what we’ve achieved to date. We recently added our daily KPIs to our company’s internal home page so that all managers can see a snapshot of how we’re performing as they log on. Not only has this focused attention on continuous improvement, but it also promotes the capabilities of the system to a wider team within the company,” Christine concludes.
“As the business grows and evolves, the system means that if we add to our portfolio, or indeed make significant changes in some areas, the insights remain current, and accessible and therefore ensure the best decisions are taken. Sage Intacct allows us to constantly tune into our hotels’ trends and activities, therefore we stand in the best position to ensure that our proposition is aligned fully with our customers. In this ever-changing world of hospitality, the value of this is priceless and we’re looking forward to embracing the next few years with this capability at our helm.”
Sage Intacct Partner for Hospitality
If you’d like to learn more about Sage Intacct, our work with Exclusive Collection, or discuss how we can help your hospitality business, please get in touch or call us on 01606 871332.