Luxury Hotel Group Builds on Digital Transformation with Percipient Cloud Connect
API-led integration tool Percipient Cloud Connect delivers comprehensive insights
and instils greater intelligence for Northern-Ireland-based Hastings Hotels.
About Hastings Hotels
Hastings Hotels, Northern Ireland’s premier hotel group, comprises six luxurious hotels of character and distinction, each set in key locations across Northern Ireland. These include the five-star Culloden Estate and Spa, the world-famous Europa Hotel, the four-star Stormont Hotel, and Northern Ireland’s largest hotel, the Grand Central Hotel—all situated within Belfast.
The Group also owns the four-star Everglades Hotel in Derry-Londonderry – Northern Ireland’s second city, and the historic Ballygally Castle set on the stunning Antrim coast, a short drive from the Giant’s Causeway. Each of the six properties is located amidst breathtaking scenery, allowing guests to discover Irish hospitality’s true meaning with luxurious accommodation, gourmet dining, world-class spa facilities and idyllic surroundings.
Since going live with Sage Intacct, have benefitted from access to accurate, in-depth and comprehensive management information to enable faster, more informed decision-making within the business.
Meeting Digital Transformation Goals
After deploying Sage Intacct in 2020, Hastings Hotels’ subsequent goals were to fully integrate the platform with Procurement, Property Management, HR & Payroll, Time & Attendance, and Recruitment systems.
“We operate a diverse portfolio of hotels – from city-based venues to country retreats, with spas, world-famous golf courses and scenery, and unique hospitality experiences all designed to meet the demands of our guests. Full visibility of our operations in ensuring our proposition meets the high standards we set ourselves is therefore paramount,” comments Peter Gibson, Finance Director, Hastings Hotels. “We migrated away from our previous system to achieve precisely that, and since going live with Sage Intacct, have benefitted from access to accurate, in-depth and comprehensive management information to enable faster, more informed decision-making within the business.”
The breadth, depth, and cohesiveness of insights were initially confined to finance, except for integration with Hastings’ procurement system, Procure Wizard. However, several years on, Hastings leveraged the API-led integration capabilities in Percipient’s Cloud Connect tool to fully integrate the hotel company’s property management system (PMS), as Peter explains:
“This level of integration across all of our key systems has brought huge benefits. The integration of the HR and payroll tools, in particular, has given us immense granularity in the way we slice and dice our wages bill, the value of which can’t be underestimated in a business where remuneration comprises the most significant cost. As rises to the minimal wage and national insurance (NI) increases take hold, dynamic management of the impact of these is imperative for the team at Hastings.
“The fact that General Managers (GMs) can view wage bills in detail, in real-time, means they can exercise greater control over budgets and costs. They can view details on all departments according to hotel or department and identify trends and anomalies across food and beverage, housekeeping, spa services, and customer service. Crucially, this is done easily via dashboards to bring autonomy and intelligence to their planning.”
With the powerful integrations underpinned by Percipient Cloud Connect consolidating Hastings’ digital transformation roll-out, the quality of data and the level of analysis possible elevate the way in which business planning takes place.
The real-time and fast nature of accessing insights means that Hastings can be proactive in mitigating any risks or cost leaks and jump on opportunities before they become obsolete. Both of these represent massive USPs in an industry subject to so much variability and fluctuating market dynamics.
Five years on from deploying Sage Intacct, it really does represent the central hub and intelligence source for the business. Our General Managers love it because it gives them the tools to do their jobs more effectively. And as a finance department, we spend less time gathering data and more time considering what to do with the data to serve the business better.
An Intelligent Financial Future
“Five years on from deploying Sage Intacct, it really does represent the central hub and intelligence source for the business,” explains Peter. “Our General Managers love it because it gives them the tools to do their jobs more effectively. And as a finance department, we spend less time gathering data and more time considering what to do with the data to serve the business better.”
One area where this evolution has been formalised is via Hastings’ hotel controllers. The group’s finance resource was previously focused mainly on transactional processing and reporting key data, but the autonomy facilitated by Sage Intacct means that this role has shifted to become more business-centric via dedicated hotel controllers.
“We now have substantially improved visibility of more in-depth, higher quality information from across the business,” Peter concludes. “The availability of these insights on an intuitive dashboard means that GMs have up-to-date information from which to perform their role to the best of their abilities.
“The fact that data is more meaningful and relevant to employees across the organisation ultimately means better decision-making based on sharper insights and instils the agility from which to make decisions quickly.
The Percipient Value
“Our bi-monthly calls with the Percipient team now represent more of a catch-up than a discussion of any issues, which is a testament to the success of our Sage Intacct deployment and the subsequent smooth integrations that followed.
“We have experienced very few problems, and whenever we encounter a hiccup, the team is there to support us. We’re fortunate that our post-pandemic trading has been really positive, and supported by Sage Intacct, Cloud Connect, and the Percipient team, we’re confident that we’ll continue to build on this in the years ahead.”
If you would like to learn more about Sage Intacct and Percipient Cloud Connect or our work with Hastings Hotels, contact us today or call us on 01606 871332.
