Hyatt International Corporation

Around the world, Hyatt is one of the most recognizable names in hotel and resort management and development. There are 210 Hyatt locations worldwide. Hyatt International Corporation operates, manage or franchise 90 hotels and resorts in 39 countries, with an additional 23 hotels under development. Hyatt Corporation operates, manage, franchise, or lease 122 hotels and resorts in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean.

With its vast cultural and geographic diversity, Hyatt International must manage property management systems (PMS), point of sale (POS) information, along with financial data from its multi-national locations. For nearly two decades, Hyatt International utilized in-house, proprietary front and back office systems at the majority of its properties. As the company expanded, the legacy systems could not adapt to the company's changing needs, and Hyatt International was faced with the choice of updating its current system or moving to an outside vendor.

“We needed a solution that could provide robust financial management functionality along with the ability to function in multi-language environments and in more than 30 currencies,” said Gebhard Rainer, vice president of hotel finance and technology for Hyatt International. “We chose Epicor iScala Hospitality for its flexibility, platform, multilingual, and multi-company capabilities, and because of the company's strong global presence, we knew they would be able to support us effectively.”

Working toward a centralized system

After a successful beta test of Epicor iScala Hospitality at the Hyatt Regency Almaty in Kazakhstan, Hyatt deployed the solution at four properties throughout Germany providing centralized, fully-integrated back office management software with real-time access to the financial and operational data among all four of the hotels.

“After seeing the success at the sites in Germany, we negotiated a global corporate agreement to have Epicor iScala Hospitality rolled out to a number of properties in Europe and the Middle East,” said Rainer. “Epicor iScala Hospitality is now the only recommended back office system for Hyatt International Hotels and Resorts.”

Hyatt is currently utilizing Epicor iScala Hospitality, part of the Epicor for Hospitality and Entertainment solution, at 43 Hyatt International locations. The remaining sites are scheduled to be rolled out by the middle to end of 2006, enabling consistency of product and platform across its properties. The solution provides Hyatt with the necessary global localization, traditional and commissary inventory management, analysis of product mix and food costing, requisitioning and standard hospitality reporting capabilities.

Epicor iScala Hospitality provides consistent and streamlined financial and operational processes and has enabled tighter controls and audit-ability to better-manage costs, as well as easier and timelier access to data within each property.

Connecting information across continents

Epicor iScala Hospitality can be rolled out within each property location or in a centralized shared services model. Hyatt International's locations in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, and India benefit from the use of a centralized back office solution. Within the centralized environment, regional offices are able to run online, customized and comparative reports between the different regions and hotels.

Epicor iScala Hospitality is equipped to handle complex localized tax structures and multi-languages allowing local staff to deal with the back office in their own language with flexible account structures to meet the local requirements.

Utilizing user-friendly interfaces, Epicor iScala Hospitality seamlessly integrates Property Management Systems (PMS), point of sale (POS), and financial accounting systems, eliminating time-consuming double and manual entry functions. “With the integration between Epicor iScala Hospitality and our on-property systems, we have witnessed a complete re-engineering of our processes which has streamlined operations,” said Rainer. “In addition, we have gained greater buying power and increased our efficiency and productivity.”

In addition, Hyatt International now has the ability to generate up-to-the-minute reports through Epicor iScala Hospitality including daily profit and loss statements while also having immediate access to inventory through the solution's stock management processes. “The ability to run daily PNL (profit and loss) statements has enabled our managers to be proactive in managing their expenses proactively,” said Rainer.

Improving and measuring business processes

With Epicor iScala Hospitality as the standardized back office solution for its operations worldwide, Hyatt International is looking at leveraging the solution to connect other elements of its business and further improve business processes. Based on the strategic goals of the company and standard industry measures, Hyatt International has a set of measurements that enable management to be more pro-active in reacting to market and business changes. The company leverages the real-time reporting capabilities in Epicor iScala Hospitality to harvest data to view the performance of the properties and to view forecasts and budgets to benchmark against the set measurements.

“The ability to access performance analysis reports and supporting market information to all hotels and business units provides a much more solid base to define strategic goals and business objectives tailored to the individual markets and environments we operate in,” said Rainer. “This, in turn, has increased reliability and accuracy of budgeting and forecasting throughout the company.”