Customer Solution Case Study
/ Destination Club Generates Rapid ROI, Enhances Services, Takes Control of Business
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Hospitality
Customer Profile
Worldwide, Exclusive Resorts, LLC, develops and manages luxury residences where club members can make reservations for vacation stays and receive personal services.
Business Situation
The company wanted to move from its Oracle business management system to a more flexible, extensible, and cost-efficient solution that would closely fit its complex business model.
Solution
Exclusive Resorts collaborated with Microsoft Services to implement Microsoft Dynamics AX, integrate the solution with its other key business systems, and tailor it to specific requirements.
Benefits
- Competitive advantage with enhanced member experience
- ROI in fewer than 12 months
- Strategic business insight and control
- Extremely dependable, scalable business infrastructure
- Powerful technology partner
Charles Livingston, Senior Vice President, Technology, Exclusive Resorts
Luxury destination club Exclusive Resorts,LLC, aims to provide the best possible service quality to members who spend time in the company’s hundreds of luxury vacation residences. Exclusive Resorts used Oracle Financial Applications as a hosted solution but needed additional system flexibility to support the company’s complex business model. In addition, Exclusive Resorts aimed to reduce operational cost and enhance the quality of service. Exclusive Resorts decided to make a change and engaged Microsoft Services to implement Microsoft Dynamics AX within an integrated business management infrastructure. Generating a return-on-investment in less than a year, Exclusive Resorts now has a technology solution that closely fits its business. Member services are more responsive, efficient, and competitive, and company leadership can confidently direct the company’s growth.
Situation
As the world’s largest luxury destination club, Exclusive Resorts, LLC,operates more than 350 high-end, private residences around the world. Members pay a one-time membership fee to join, plus annual dues each year to continue participating, and can make reservations after deciding how many days per year they want to spend at any of the company’s properties. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, Exclusive Resorts serves approximately 3,300 members and experiences a continuing flow of new participants.
High-Quality Member Services
Founded in 2002, Exclusive Resorts was an early entrant in the burgeoning luxury destination club market. Most of Exclusive Resorts’s employees work as sales representatives, concierges, member service managers, or in other roles that directly benefit members’ experiences. Member feedback for the company is extremely positive, with a 90 percent trip satisfaction ratingin every year of operation. Producing that level of high-quality member experience takes friendly, personalized service that fosters close relationships with the members and systems that support immediate access to information as well as streamlined transaction processing. It also involves developing and managing real estate, including the complex financial management and reporting required in the global locations where the properties are.
Multiple, Disconnected Systems
In the company’s very early days, Exclusive Resorts selected Oracle software as its enterprise resource planning(ERP) and financial management solution. The solution was hosted with Oracle On Demand. In addition, Exclusive Resorts selected Salesforce.com, also a hosted solution, as the customer account management tool for the field sales representatives. The company’s IT group created ER Compass®, an extensive member administrative system that enables complete member management—from reserving residences around the world, to handling ofmembers’ grocery and itinerary requests, and to managing their personal information and travel preferences. At the time, there was no integration between these three systems.
Inflexible Technology
As the company grew and matured, Exclusive Resorts found it cumbersome to adapt the ERP system to the way the business worked. Charles Livingston, Senior Vice President, Technology, at Exclusive Resorts, says, “We could not easily customize the Oracle system to our complex business requirements. Finance employees found it challengingto use. Integration proved to be difficult, and extracting data directly from it to produce meaningful business reporting was a painstaking and brittletask that required us to purchase an additional software product. We had to dedicate several team members to support the Oracle solution and produce the reports our decision makers and stakeholders needed.” What’s more, Exclusive Resorts incurred substantial licensing fees, following a complex cost structure.
Decision for Change
The company decided to look for another ERP system that could easily integrate with the technologies already in place and help Exclusive Resorts boost the quality and competitiveness of member services while supporting membership growth. “We were confident that we could achieve our primary goal, which was to find and implement a solution that could meet most of our business needs out of the box while reducing our cost of ownership, but we were looking for more,” says Rob Mullins, Director of Technology Architecture and Analysis at Exclusive Resorts. “We knew that if we found a system that also provided good integration capability and was very extensible and flexible, it would substantially improve our operating efficiency and even result in a competitive advantage.”
Solution
Livingston and Mullins spent several months working closely with the company’s business groups to define the requirements for the new ERP system. A comprehensive gap analysis in accordance with the key requirements identified a handful of possible solutions from hundreds of offerings. Exclusive Resorts invited some of the remaining vendors to perform demonstrations. Says Livingston, “Critical considerations for us were the availability of long-term product support and a broad partner community with deep expertise.”
Flexible Technology That
Fits the Business
Eventually, Microsoft Dynamics AX made the cut as the solution with the best potential to meet Exclusive Resorts’ current and future needs. “It was clear to us that we could customize and extend Microsoft Dynamics AX for our business quite easily,” says Mullins. “The solution has a layered architecture that offers great flexibility—far more than any other ERP system that we reviewed. This minimizes application fragility, and thereby reduces the cost and effort associated with updates, upgrades and customizations, which tend to be a significant and often underestimated challenge with most ERP solutions.”
One competitor under close review was Sage MAS 500, which offered almost all of the capabilities Exclusive Resorts looked for. However, that solution also had limitations. Mullins explains, “We did not feel that MAS 500 was as flexible and extensible as Microsoft Dynamics AX.”
Livingston participated inthe CIO Summit at Microsoft headquarters to discuss the Microsoft Dynamics products and also attended a Microsoft Dynamics Convergence event, a worldwide annual conference for customers and technology partners, and had a chance to talk with Microsoft Dynamics leadership at both events. “I gained insight into the road map Microsoft is following for Microsoft Dynamics AX and the level of commitment that Microsoft continues to demonstrate to customers of the Microsoft Dynamics product family,” he says. “That outlook was very meaningful for Exclusive Resorts and made us confident and comfortable with our decision.”
Exclusive Resorts engaged with Microsoft Services for the solution implementation. With the on-premises implementation, the IT group can manage and support Microsoft Dynamics AX along with other systems. Today, approximately 30 people, most of them in the accounting, finance, and tax teams, use Microsoft Dynamics AX to perform their tasks. The main solution capabilities Microsoft Services implemented for Exclusive Resorts were:
- Accounts payable
- Accounts receivable
- Banking
- Fixed assets
- General ledger
- Purchasing
- Intercompany
Integrations with All Key Systems
Because Microsoft Dynamics AX integrates with the company’s other key applications, several thousand people, including members, concierges, sales staff, and member service managers, regularly access solution data and capabilities without being aware of it. “By usingthe MicrosoftDynamics AX Application Integration Framework and Business Connector, we are able to abstract the location of business data and simply make it available to users in their preferred business application,” says Mullins.
Through Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft Dynamics AX integrates with all of the core application systems at Exclusive Resorts. These integrations result in direct cost savings by reducing processing time, eliminating redundant data entry and enabling self-service. For example, members manage their account information directly through ER Compass®, yet the information is securely stored in Microsoft Dynamics AX. When a member approves charges, they are instantly transmitted electronically to Microsoft Dynamics AX, eliminating duplicate entry and reducing time in the billing cycle, reducing overhead cost and improving member satisfaction at the same time.
Three Levels of Reporting and
Business Analysis
Reporting and analysis in Microsoft Dynamics AX and other Microsoft technologies are important for Exclusive Resorts in taking the business forward. There are three main aspects to the company’s use of software tools to create business insight:
- Finance and accounting managers extensively use Microsoft FRx for self-service reporting, drawing on data from Microsoft Dynamics AX.
- Business managers throughout the company can work with Microsoft Excel to run ad-hoc queries and develop their own reports.
- By using Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services, SQL Server Analysis Services, and SQL Server Reporting Servicesto extract the meaning of data residing in Microsoft Dynamics AX and the data warehouse built on SQL Server, the business intelligence (BI) team at Exclusive Resorts provides business performance and other advanced reporting to executives and decision makers.
Summarizing the implementation experience, Livingston says, “We needed a system that addressed our core requirements with out-of-the-box capabilities while providing a platform upon which we could readily integrate other systems, add third-party solutions, and develop our own custom functionality. Complementing the solution’s rich functionality, we created all the integrations, customizations, and extensions we needed, clearly proving that Microsoft Dynamics AX was the best choice to meet our specialized needs.”
Benefits
Exclusive Resorts successfully transitioned to dependable, scalable business technology that assists the company in meeting its objectives for customer service and organizational productivity. Says Livingston, “We can fit Microsoft Dynamics AX to our complex business. It helps us to provide excellent member service and to function as a more efficient and competitive organization.”
Competitive Advantage with Enhanced Member Experience
With an integrated business management infrastructure that has Microsoft Dynamics AX at its core, Exclusive Resorts can serve members more effectively. Because of the integrations between business systems, member billing, for example, can take place reliably and promptly. “Microsoft Dynamics AX has enabled us to align key business concepts amongst our systems and more seamlessly integrate our business applications, enabling us to better meet the needs of our members and employees,” says Livingston. “As a result, our member service experience has been enhanced and we can manage the business more efficiently, which is a realcompetitive advantage.”
ROI in Fewer Than 12 Months
Moving to Microsoft Dynamics AX as the company’s ERP system and integrating it with other key business systems has helped Exclusive Resorts produce a number of efficiencies and reduce operational costs. Duplicate data entry, previously aubiquitous and time-consuming task, has completely disappeared. The technology specialists who facilitated reporting from the previous ERP system are now doing more business-critical work, and the company no longer pays licensing for the software tool that was required to make such reporting possible.
Exclusive Resorts has full control over its business management solution, so the IT department can efficiently manage the technology. Expenses for hosting services and outsourced support, together with complex licensing fees for the previous ERP system, no longer impact the company’s budget. Livingston states, “Due to dramatic cost reductions and efficiencies, we generated a return-on-investment for Microsoft Dynamics AX and first-year licensing infewer than 12 months.”
Strategic Business Insight and Control
Following the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX, Exclusive Resorts improved its reporting and decision support capabilities to maintain a close alignment between financial management and the direction of the business. “Because of the relatively uncomplicated data structures in Microsoft Dynamics AX, we can easily transform data into relevant information, which in turn can drive actual knowledge and business insight,” says Livingston. “The ability to incorporate detailed financial information into our existing business intelligence environment enables rich, deep analysis and reporting, which proves to be critical for every department. We expect to travel much further along this path.”
“The amount of support and cooperation that we received from Microsoft Services was fantastic. It’s very unusual to find this sort of business relationship today.”Rob Mullins, Director of Technology Architecture and Analysis, Exclusive Resorts
For example, at a granular level, reporting queries at Exclusive Resorts helpweigh the popularity of destinations against the cost and financial performance of the residences in these destinations. More strategically, business insight helps decision makers and analysts to measure performance and accomplish more with the company’s means. “With Microsoft Dynamics AX and our other Microsoft technologies, we are a more agile company and a stronger club. Business insight lets us practice conservative, efficient management of funds and resources, which means we can make the right investments to provide members with a better experience.”
Extremely Dependable, Scalable
Business Infrastructure
Exclusive Resorts finds Microsoft Dynamics AX to have a perfect combination of reliability, scalability, and extensibility. Says Mullins, “The solution is extremely reliable. To date, we have achieved 99.99 percent availability.”
Going forward, Exclusive Resorts will continue to adapt Microsoft Dynamics AX to gain additional operational efficiencies and sharpen its competitive edge, relying on the solution’s flexibility to support enhancements and entirely new functionality. And, as the company implements a greater variety of usage scenarios, the solution’s scalability will also be critical. Although the number of direct users might grow slowly, the thousands of indirect users—members, sales associates, concierges, member service representatives, and others—will cause an ever-increasing workload for Microsoft Dynamics AX. Livingston remarks, “The strength of Microsoft Dynamics AX as a platform for growth with solid scale-out capabilities will help us to continue to grow our business and the usage of the system for the foreseeable future.”
Powerful Technology Partner
During the implementation, Exclusive Resorts collaborated closely with Microsoft Services. Team members from Microsoft Services involved the Microsoft Dynamics AX product group and connected Exclusive Resorts directly with the people who work on new enhancements for the solution. Says Mullins, “We suggested several changes that, upon review, the product team decided to incorporate into Microsoft Dynamics AX. The amount of support and cooperation that we received from Microsoft Services was fantastic. It’s very unusual to find this sort of business relationship today.”
Jon Strachan, Engagement Manager with Microsoft Services, agrees. “This engagement was truly a partnership, in which the Exclusive Resorts team, Microsoft Services, and the Microsoft Dynamics AX Product Team came together for the customer’s benefit,” he says. “We received tremendously valuable product feedback from a company with unique requirements and a sophisticated business model, and that input made Microsoft Dynamics AX a better product.”
With the previous ERP system, Exclusive Resorts employees often had to navigate several layers of a support organization before they were able to resolve an issue. In contrast, they now receive superior support. “Compared to our past vendor relationship, this is night and day,” says Livingston. “The support services for Microsoft Dynamics AX are outstanding. When we contact people there, they are extremely responsive and knowledgeable about the product. It doesn’t require navigating a maze of options and personnel to address our concerns. Microsoft should be proud of its support organization.” At the same time, Livingston and Mullins point out that fewer support calls take place, because they find Microsoft Dynamics AX to be a much more manageable solution than the previous system.