Grand Beach Hotel

The Grand Beach Hotel Welcomes Sage 300 ERP

The luxurious Grand Beach Hotel in famed Miami Beach opened in late November and was sold out for New Year’s Eve within a few days. And during a year when average hotel occupancy rates were well below 60 percent, the Grand Beach Hotel is enjoying consistent occupancy rates above 70 percent. The acclaimed hotel boasts 430 rooms—most with separate seating areas, two pools, a well-appointed bar, and a full-service restaurant. By lavishing attention on its guests, typically European, Latin American, and domestic vacation travelers, the hotel is building a reputation for boutique-hotel service in an amenity-rich setting. Grand Beach Hotel set itself up for success right from the beginning by selecting Sage 300 ERP* as its financial and reporting solution.

Checking Into Sage 300 ERP
“Our European owners have unique financial reporting requirements, so we needed a package that offers broad flexibility in its reporting capabilities,” explains Marcos De La O, director of finance for the Grand Beach Hotel. “We also require remote access for the owners as they travel, robust security features, a quick return on investment, and the solution needs to be able to grow with us.”

The hotel first considered proprietary software designed specifically for hotel accounting. “It was nearly twice the cost of Sage 300 ERP and didn’t do anything for us that Sage 300 ERP couldn’t do. As a new company, cost is definitely a consideration, and if we can get the functionality we need at a better price, it makes sense to go in that direction.”

Microsoft ® Dynamics GP was also briefly considered because De La O had utilized this software in a previous position. “It was overly complex for our needs here,” says De La O. “We wanted a system that was easy to learn and easy to use, and Sage 300 ERP is such a system.”

Sage 300 ERP fits the hotel’s requirements precisely, delivering core accounting functionality, remote access capabilities, flexible reporting, and scalability at a competitive price point.

Deluxe Reporting Amenities
As De La O explains, many hotels utilize a similar account structure that allows them to show costs and revenue by department, such as housekeeping or concierge services. “This allows us to see departmental detail so that we can compare actual monthly operations to the budget established for the month, to last year’s monthly performance, to the previous month’s performance, and to the most recent forecast.”

Challenge
The newly built and opened Grand Beach Hotel required an accounting and financial solution that met its requirements for robust reporting, tight security, and scalability.

Solution
The Grand Beach Hotel selected Sage 300 ERP because it met all the hotel’s requirements at a competitive price.

Results
Sage 300 ERP is delivering returns in every area of the Grand Beach Hotel’s accounting operation by streamlining reporting, providing secure and remote data access, and offering scalability for future growth and expansion.

The Grand Beach Hotel’s owners, however, are more concerned with a consolidated view of overall hotel operations while retaining the ability to drill down into the departmental detail as needed.

“Our Sage 300 ERP partner was able to help us structure both types of reports, drawing from the same data,” De La O says. “We get the detail we need for successful day-to-day operations, and the owners get the summarized information they need for long-term planning.”

De La O appreciates the quick download of reports to Microsoft Excel ® that is possible from within Sage 300 ERP. “In other systems I’ve used, I had to export and then import the data to use it in Excel,” he says. “It’s one simple step in Sage 300 ERP.”

Sage 300 ERP also allows authorized users to publish reports in XML format. “That’s how I make the reports available to the owners,” explains De La O. “We place them up on a secure website, and they can view and download them at their convenience.”

Sensitive Data Remains Secure
The security of sensitive corporate financial data is a priority for the Grand Beach Hotel. The hotel has configured its Sage 300 ERP solution to offer access rights based on the individual user or group of users. De La O can tailor the access to ensure that the staff has easy access to the data they need to perform their jobs, while protecting other data from being viewed or changed.

Fully Integrated Purchasing System
The hotel utilizes the Sage 300 ERP Purchase Orders module to order and track purchases of food and supplies. Departmental managers request items, and when approved, the purchase order is issued and sent by email to the hotel’s vendors, directly from within the software. “We give our managers the ability to view open purchase orders that relate to their departments, as well as past purchases,” De La O notes. “This helps them remain accountable and aware of their expenditures.”

As items and the corresponding invoice are received, an Accounts Payable invoice is automatically created in Sage 300 ERP, eliminating duplicate data entry to form a fully integrated purchasing system.

Ready For an Extended Stay
While the Grand Beach Hotel may have recently opened, its success seems assured. De La O is confident that the company has selected a financial and accounting solution that will meet its needs today, and can scale to meets the needs of tomorrow. “Sage 300 ERP is proving ideal for our needs,” he concludes.