Reduction of risk and improved workforce at largest Danish hospitality operator

Automation of financial reporting creates efficiency and transparency at major hospitality operator

Consultants on the case

Søren Vadmand

Christian Dahl Olin

Frederik Jørgensen

Daniel Christensen

Sector: Service

Region: Scandinavia

Business intelligence

Data strategy

Data warehouse

Process automation

Identify

Challenges and opportunities

One of the largest Danish operators of hotels, conferences, and hospitality outlets operates in a highly competitive and uncertain landscape. This was greatly compounded by the COVID-19 outbreak. When the company's turnover took a dive, minimization of operational costs became a top priority. Until that point, the company had relied on manual reporting of all invoices which left plenty of room for human error, as few employees possessed all information and responsibility.

The company contacted us, so we could help them discover a smarter way of assembling and using data. We identified the opportunity of an automated reporting flow. This would improve the overall integrity, flexibility and detail of data while lowering the risk of human error. It would also facilitate the opportunity of exact and punctual economic insights so less resources and operational costs would be spent on manual reporting and onboarding.

Qualify

Analysis and evaluation

After identifying the opportunities of the hospitality operator, we moved on to qualifying the data projects. We analyzed and evaluated the configuration and design of the reporting system through prototyping, portfolio management and stakeholder engagement. We qualified a brand-new data warehouse that systemized and specified all previous and future invoices in a detailed financial and operational reporting system. This data system enabled full transparency of the company’s sales and costs through drill-down that could narrow down every single invoice. Daily reports, KPIs and balance sheets were automatically updated to provide an updated view towards the monthly profit and loss.

The drill-down system enabled a precise, visual overview of all finances and expenses. The purpose of this data warehouse was to collect all data under one roof thus eliminating the risk of lost knowledge, human error, and delay. We made sure to engage relevant stakeholders, to ensure their gradual learning and structure their future dependencies.

Realize

Implementation and handover

The process from qualifying the plan to realizing the goals took Copenhagen Data 2,5 months. In short-development cycles, we designed, developed, and adopted the data solutions. The automated reporting system facilitated detailed cross-organizational financial reports with a streamlined design and self-service functionalities. Copenhagen Data also carried out a handover plan, where employees and management were trained in using the data solution.

We rolled out the solution by ensuring their support and functionality on all target devices. Now management was able to see a daily report on their way to work or controllers could dive into specific invoices on their workstation. The time of manual reporting was over, operational costs were saved and the company benefitted from precise and daily automated financial insights.

The results of the data project are summarized below

Results

Reduction of risk and cost of workforce through the automation of processes from extraction to preparation
Brand new presentation of data including daily reports, balance sheets and KPIs
New vital insights about business operations through increased reporting detail and the ability to drill-down to individual attachments
Moving from manual push to automated on-demand reporting has increased the speed of action
The centralization and improved ease-of-access of reporting enhances the sharing of financial knowledge across the organization