About Small Luxury Hotels of the World
Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH) matches independently minded guests with independently spirited hotels.
The diverse collection of over 500 hotels in more than 80 countries around the world includes everything from cutting edge design hotels and city centre sanctuaries to historic country mansions and remote private islands.
SLH hotels are consistently different, however, they are all united by the fact that they offer the best locations, highest quality, personalised service and a truly authentic way to discover a destination.
The Challenge
Small Luxury Hotels are headquartered in London which acts the central base of operations for around the world and this is where all financial documents are processed, paid and stored.
They were always expanding and bringing new hotels into the group and as each hotel joins it brings with it additional requirements for documentation, paperwork and processes all of which is managed from head office.
This includes hundreds of invoices received in multiple currencies and formats which needed to printed, distributed for approval, manually entered into Sage, paid and stored onsite for 7 years. During this period, when financial documents needed to be located for queries or audits it was difficult and time consuming retrieving them.
Small Luxury Hotels appointed Charterhouse to review their current processes in order to recommend and implement a solution to address their challenges.
“Charterhouse have been an integral part of improving our internal processes which have given us more visibility and control of our expenditure. I’d thoroughly recommend Charterhouse as your chosen partner to deliver your document management system.Director of Finance & Data Protection Officer, Small Luxury Hotels
The Solution
In order to fully understand the current processes and specific requirements of the organisation, Charterhouse engaged with a number of key stakeholders to ensure that the new solution would
address all of their challenges.
Phase one focused on invoice processing and approval, automated data extraction and integration with Sage. Then phase two helped introduce a digital purchase order submission and approval workflow which then integrated with the new invoice process.
The combined phases of this project now allow SLH staff to digitally request and approve purchase orders for goods and services. Following this, when the invoice is submitted by the supplier, the system will automatically ingest the document and extract the data which removes the need for any manual data entry. Invoices that match a purchase order are directly sent to accounts payable.
Invoices received by the business without a purchase order or where there is a discrepancy between the approved purchase order and invoice are digitally distributed to relevant staff for
ratification.
As Sage and the new document management system are integrated, there is no longer a need for duplicate data entry into multiple systems or locations which saves time, money and creates a better user experience. This digital system also enables SLH to instantly retrieve any financial document when required.
The Benefits
- The introduction of purchase orders gives better visibility of spend and cash flow projection
- Severe reduction in unexpected expenditure
- Eliminated need for manual data entry whilst also improving accuracy of information
- Reduction of spending on printing, postage and paper
- Lowered document archiving costs
- Total version control for increased accountability and document security
- Created company policy for business expenditure
- Better knowledge management and search facilities
- Dramatic reduction in misfiled or missing documents
- Identifies financial discrepancies and fraudulent invoices more quickly
- Action tasks and access data from any location in the world to streamline business processes
- Creates an instant Disaster Recovery system by hosting both processes and document in the cloud
Read more about our Document Management Solutions »