4 Ways Hyatt Transformed R2R

With over 200 hotels to manage, having good visibility across the business is essential for an efficient and high-quality close. While Hyatt had made big strides – improving processes and eliminating spreadsheets – they still saw room to improve the Record-to- Report (R2R) process.

Hyatt’s shared service center in Oklahoma had outsourced elements of the reconciliation process to Genpact in India, using a web-based tool. However, they still faced some challenges, including:

• A lack of real-time insight. While the outsourcers relieved shared services of much of the manual work, Hyatt lacked real-time visibility of where they stood in the R2R process.
   
• A laborious audit process. For audits, the process was difficult, as statements and documentation had to be downloaded manually.
   
• A stressful close process. Travis Curl, GL Analyst at Hyatt, says, “We have a 2-day close, so it was a very stressful month close for the hotels, for Genpact, and for us, so we were looking for a solution to improve this.”

When Hyatt started looking at technology solutions, the key factor in BlackLine was that they are entirely cloud-based and would, therefore, enable good visibility and be scalable. By implementing BlackLine, the shared services, the corporate office, the hotels, and Genpact now have access to the same information at the same time.

Here are 4 ways this technology and the new process has transformed R2R at Hyatt

Streamlined audit to a “non-process.” Hyatt is now saving 700 hours per year in audit efforts alone. Curl says BlackLine’s improved visibility for auditors “has saved us a ton of time. It’s made audit a ‘non-process’ for us, and eliminated most of our time pulling back-up and documentation, as most of that is stored within BlackLine.”

Developed real-time visibility. Hyatt now has the ability to track reconciliations and understand the progress in the close process for the hotels, corporate office and Genpact. “Being able to see where corporate is, where hotels are, in real-time in one location, has been beneficial for us.” The tool gives them “a common platform, where users know when something is outstanding, or when something is rejected.”

Auto-certification streamlined the process. Hyatt processes 70,000 account recs (and that figure is growing). They now have an average 70% auto-certification level, so about 49,000+ auto-certify on a monthly basis. Curl says, “If the balance is zero and there is no activity, we will have that account auto-certify. Whenever the sub-ledger matches to the GL balance, it will auto-certify. If the bank amount uploaded matches the GL balance, that will auto-certify. For intercompany accounts, as long as the difference is less than threshold, they will auto-certify.” Hyatt currently has their threshold to 0, so if there are any discrepancies they use Genpact to go in and explore the rec before it certifies.

A cleaner, faster close. With improved process and BlackLine’s technology, Hyatt now employs close checklists, and has improved ability to track progress, passing off tasks between Genpact and hotels. At month-end, Genpact has a list of what they have to do, and they can see when hotels have signed off financial statements, confirming journal entries are reviewed, approved and accurate. Then Genpact can do their validations to make sure everything is flowing smoothly for their financial statements. Curl says that “this has been a big improvement for us and it allows us to close in 2 business days.”

Transformational results

Streamlining this process and improving visibility has reduced stress throughout reconciliation and helps everyone in the business focus on delivering a better service. Beyond the efficiencies, the quality of the close is improved. The outsourcer can focus more on problem-solving, the shared service center can focus on providing a higher quality service, and the hotel can focus more on customer service instead of accounting.

View the full webinar and visit BlackLine’s website to learn more about their R2R technology.