Carlson Hospitality Worldwide

Radisson Rests Easy With Sage 300 ERP

Carlson Hospitality Worldwide felt that the wide variety of business management systems used in its portfolio of Radisson-managed hotels was reducing efficiency and adding costs to hotel operations. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Radisson Hotels & Resorts has over 430 hotels worldwide, representing more than 100,000 guest rooms in 59 countries. The company regularly acquires properties with unique back-office systems: The resulting consolidation of financial data was a staff-intensive and inefficient process.

Lack of standardization constrained the quantity and quality of management information. It was difficult to perform in-depth analysis or generate customized and standardized reports. Like many companies, Radisson needed to continue accommodating change while finding an economical means of converting geographically distributed legacy business systems.

Choosing the Solution
Anticipating further growth, Radisson sought ease of use, improved reporting, and a straightforward way to integrate financial systems. For a growing managed hotel portfolio, reducing costs to convert existing systems was a key objective. The challenge was streamlining the accounting process while ensuring the operational efficiency and reliability o support systems—without growing infrastructure, staff, or budget.

Radisson was already familiar with the advantages of a centralized IT solution. Carlson Hospitality Worldwide maintained its industry-leading Curtis-C Reservation System and front-end support systems from a state-of-the-art data center in Omaha, Nebraska. The new accounting solution would have to operate autonomously and also connect with Carlson’s data center to make it possible to download and protect property-specific data.

After a thorough competitive analysis, Radisson decided to license Sage 300 ERP* as a hosted application. Competitive solutions had no hosting experience or infrastructure and only provided hosting through a third-party arrangement.

Beyond Accounting to Accountability
Sage was selected because of its confidence in its ability to deliver the technology, performance, and support needed over the long haul. “We wanted to work with a top-tier organization—a company that would be in the online accounting space for years to come.

Challenge
Lack of standardization constrained the quantity and quality of management information, making it difficult for Radisson to perform in-depth analysis or generate reports.

Solution
Sage 300 ERP provides reliability, broad functionality, and secure accessibility, enabling Radisson to operate more efficiently.

Results
Radisson is using Sage 300 ERP to help synchronize the hotel chain’s diverse accounting practices without diluting its focus on customer-impact systems.

Sage is a company with a history of enhancing its business software with advanced technology,” says Jim Grimshaw, director of hotel systems for Carlson Hospitality Worldwide.

An Overnight Success
Radisson has been rapidly converting as many as four of its managed hotels per month to Sage 300 ERP. Grimshaw attributes this swift implementation to the technical expertise and benefits of the model and processes. “We’re working with experienced people. The conversion partner, Front Line Systems, has done a terrific job moving the first hotels. They are equally fluent in the Internet, Sage 300 ERP software, and accounting. This combination has enabled our managed hotels to ramp up on the new system quickly.”

“Sage 300 ERP further enabled growth of a centralized hotel accounting office,” says Ian Rogers, director of corporate accounting for Radisson Hotels & Resorts. “We can more cost effectively manage the hotel’s accounting from a central office for properties that may not necessarily require a full accounting team on site. For hotels with accounting departments on property, we reduce training costs and setup time because we standardize on the back-office solution.”

Hosted accounting also provides the flexibility for the hotels to implement the latest software features as needed, without requiring technical staff travel to remote locations. Each hotel can automatically upgrade its individual location when it is convenient.

Grimshaw concludes, “Sage 300 ERP allows us to standardize the hotels’ accounting without diluting our focus on front-line, customer impact systems. Being able to seamlessly facilitate operational changes is a genuine advantage for us.

“Sage 300 ERP is ideally suited for companies that are constantly looking for ways to reduce costs while improving accessibility and back-office integration.”