Cornelia Neeser (Managing Director of key-SIS, PPR's implementation partner in Germany) reports on the success of the Management Information System (IMS) implemented at the Arkona AG for the Arkona Hotels and A-ROSA Resorts during the yearly evaluation.

Conny Neeser:

"As is customary when any new software is introduced into a new corporate environment, the success depends entirely on how good the actual implementation is fulfilling the customer needs.

Having been involved through the whole process, from the evaluation of what was necessary, the decision who should build it, the actual development and then the actual implementation and support, key-SIS has had a very "Hands on approach", which is essential if you want to know whether the application is solving the objectives and problems it was built to solve.

The user group consists of around 150 active users: from the controlling and management at the head office, from the GM´s of the individual hotels, the administrational management, department managers through to the Night Auditors.

All the users said they thought the tool was a resounding success, because it was doing exactly what it was built for:

• Huge time saving
• Assistance in the administrational world of budgeting, forecasting, reporting etc.
• Creating far greater transparency

• this web enabled application was specifically developed for the Hotel industry
• decentralized Budget planning in one central database
• on time availability of actual decision enabling figures
• time savings when drilling down financial information from different data bases
• focusing on the analysis of figures and transparency of contents
• and all this is available on-line as a web enabled tool

• focusing on the analysis of figures and transparency of contents
• definition of individual cost structure per property within a hotel chain
• definition of an individual cost centre structure per Hotel as part of a chain
• correlation of different account tables within one Hotel chain for centralised reporting following one structure
• detailed personal planning per cost centre and based on the individual employees salary
• monitoring of the status in process of budget planning
• commentary possibility in every part of the tool
• planning of repairs- and maintenance costs on the basis of the detailed contract information
• weekly commentary report of the operations, within the main of the week for a central overview
• enabled constant planning of cash-flow on a weekly basis with actions decentralised data entry from the hotels
• working capital analysis
• occupancy and revenue reporting with daily extracted data from the FO-systems
• P&L reports following the standards of the hotel industry (Uniform Systems of Accounts, HGB, UK GAAP)
• flexibility of defining the individual structure of report and budgeting parameter by the customer without programming work