TLH Leisure Resort Digitalises for Future Growth
Southwest leisure leader transforms financial management with Sage Intacct and Percipient.
About TLH Leisure Resort
Founded in 1947 as a 28-bedroom hotel, TLH Leisure Resort comprises four interconnected hotels on one seven-acre site. With unique leisure facilities and year-round entertainment, the resort boasts an enviable location only 300 metres from the beach. With its original owner having retired in 2018, a management buyout (MBO) saw three senior managers, Jason Garside, John Finnegan, and Ian Piercy, take on ownership and management of the business.
The biggest resort in the Southwest, TLH’s Derwent, Victoria, Toorak, and Carlton hotels provide 438 bedrooms, while Aztec Leisure offers spa facilities, a gym, studios, pools, bistros, and games. With unrivalled entertainment, there is something for everyone.
Modernising for a New Era
Having survived the challenging years of the pandemic, TLH reviewed its operational processes to establish the right foundations for future growth. Part of this involved procuring a new financial management platform to replace its legacy Access Accounts system, which the company had outgrown.
Having explored various options, TLH selected Sage Intacct from Percipient based on its breadth of capability and ease of use, as well as Percipient’s extensive and deep experience in the hospitality sector. With a remit to be implemented within just four weeks, the solution went live in July 2023 following a month’s deployment, which is unprecedented.
Four Weeks to Value
“Percipient really did pull out the stops to meet our remit for a four-week deployment,” comments Ian Piercy, CFO, TLH Leisure Resort. “We knew that it could be rolled out in a timely way owing to its cloud-native architecture, but we were conscious that this timeframe was untypical and a tall order. The Percipient team, however, worked around the clock, taking a pragmatic approach and were dedicated to our goal.
“Now live, Sage Intacct makes accounting simple. It is so easy to use and has been fully embraced by our small accounts team,” Ian continues.
TLH currently uses Sage Intacct’s core functionality for basic P&L and revenue reporting and has seen massive benefit from being able to change nominal codes within the Chart of Accounts on an ongoing basis. This has resulted in a tremendous time saving, as the team would previously have had to recreate the item from scratch.
Intuitive Design, Intelligent Decisions
“The intuitive design and flexibility make the platform easy to work with. Supporting four hotels and three retail centres, we can view the P&L of each entity and consolidated accounts. Crucially, managers can access, interpret and use the insights to help plan and forecast. The fact that it’s delivered to them accurately and timely allows intelligence to be applied rather than relying on retrospective cycle-based projections. The team can be responsive, which is key in an industry with ever-moving goalposts and new challenges landing all the time.
“In the context of the ongoing skills crisis, for example, this kind of empowerment and autonomy helps job satisfaction and development potential, bringing value to wider business goals,” Ian adds.
Navigating Challenging Times
Looking ahead, the wealth of challenges facing hospitality businesses show few signs of abating with the recent budget adding further fuel to the energy and cost of living crises. Sage Intacct’s value lies in its ability to deliver real-time intelligence, helping TLH navigate this in the best way, mitigating risk and costs, and capitalising on opportunities for revenue creation.
“Percipient has been a hugely valuable partner, not just in driving an incredibly fast deployment, but in supporting us on an ongoing basis,” Ian concludes. “From day one, their consultants were outstanding, providing a highly professional and diligent support service. They weren’t phased by our request for a short implementation and provided a consistent, straightforward, seamless path to go-live, which was on time and within budget. Working with them, our next steps are to look at the potential of the reporting to see what we can create to gather more insights and intelligence.”
A Bright Future
TLH’s ability to view the entire business, compare hotel and retail activity and performance, and drill down as needed is a game changer, and the team is looking forward to exploring this potential further.
“Sage Intacct is designed for modern businesses looking for simple-to-use systems. It makes sense of complexities to deliver intelligent, in-depth insights and has facilitated seamless accounting within our finance team. But more than this, it delivers intelligence to business managers for optimised decision-making and a more cohesive, informed way of running the business. This, in turn, instils scale from which to expand as our plans dictate.”
Specialists in Sage Intacct for Hospitality
If you would like to learn about Sage Intacct or to discuss how we can help your hospitality business, get in touch today or call us on 01606 871332.
