Hospitality Operator Checks in to Serious Efficiency
Three legacy systems that couldn’t share information hamstrung a privately-held hospitality operator with more than 40 properties and nearly 6,000 employees. The company employed substantial staff just to manually enter and re-enter employee data. Rather than requiring that the company start with a clean slate, HR and payroll provider Adams Keegan integrated the existing systems to improve efficiency and introduce a level of data accuracy the operator had never experienced. And that’s only part of the story.
A creative solution for HR and payroll integrates systems, streamlines processes, and simplifies workflow.
After more than 40 years in business, managing 40 properties and nearly 6,000 employees, this privately-held hospitality management company was in need of streamlined HR processes. Their payroll and employee management processes had become inefficient and forced them to employ a substantial staff dedicated simply to manually entering and re-entering employee data into multiple systems.
With labor costs averaging approximately 50 percent of total operating expenses in the hotel industry, the company had a significant opportunity to improve the bottom line with a more efficient system. In addition to personnel cost, requiring multiple entries of the same information created risks for errors and non-compliance.
The company relied on a proprietary ERP system for employee management, and separate third-party systems for payroll and benefits, with no integration among the three. The pain was felt from the corporate level down to the human resources directors at each property, who were responsible for a great deal of data entry themselves.
As a result, the company had difficulty finding time to develop its people and focus on the guest experience.
The Challenge
The company needed to integrate three separate systems, while improving operational efficiencies, without distressing 6,000 employees and disrupting the entire enterprise. The key was to ensure compliance with an enhanced, simplified process that minimized disruption—both in the transition process and in long-term, day-to-day operations.
It would have been relatively simple to eliminate the original, proprietary system with an entirely new system; however, that would have required a time-consuming data transfer and would have created organizational upheaval. Rather than forcing the company to start with a clean slate, IT staff presented the option of redesigning the old system to perform new, internal functions in cooperation with a new comprehensive HR management system.
Based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the new CBRE Hotels’ Americas Research edition of Trends in the Hotel Industry, average hourly compensation for a hotel industry employee recently increased by 3.6 percent. Most of that percentage increase was due to non-benefit compensation, or payroll. HR departments are better able to offset those increases by streamlining back-office operations that will allow them to operate more efficiently.
The Adams Keegan Solution
After determining that it was possible to integrate systems without losing the original and proprietary data, employees were able to continue to interface with the legacy system as usual. But behind the scenes, a new HRIS platform united all data, vendors and functions, eliminating the need for multiple inputs. The solution integrated information in such a way that no data would need to be entered more than once, by anyone, and the output would be a single set of accurate numbers, regardless of the system touchpoint.
The Results
The new HR solution provided substantial improvements in efficiency, speed, accuracy, cost and compliance – without disruption or retraining – and simplified the company’s workflow. At the property level, the employee-related administrative burdens of the general managers and HR directors were vastly decreased, leaving significantly more time to focus on employee development, team culture and the overall guest experience.
By working with an organization willing to take time to understand and evaluate their specific situation, the company was able to integrate a uniquely crafted solution and get back to focusing on guests.
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Adams Keegan