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Case Study
How Nelson Meers Group got a live view of every hotel with NetSuite OneWorld
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At a Glance
- Hotels
- Bars
- Gaming
- Food service
Nelson Meers Group owns and operates hotels across Sydney, including the Ashfield, Ermington and Guildford Hotels. Through its hospitality business Sonnel, its venues span bars, dining, gaming and food service, with each venue trading as its own entity.
Hospitality: hotels, bars, gaming and food service
Sydney, Australia
Multi-venue hotel group, with each venue run as its own entity
NetSuite OneWorld, implemented by DWR
Key Results
Same day
Each venue and the consolidated group, visible at any point in the month
Was: weeks out of date
Every purchase
Carries an approved PO trail and the supplier invoice PDF
Was: approval after the event
4 or 5
Hotels added since go-live, plus a move into food service
Was: growth paced by the systems
The Challenge
A MYOB file for every venue, and no group view
- Separate MYOB files
- POS and takings keyed in by hand
- Purchase orders approved after the spend
- Intercompany reconciled manually
Sonnel had built a portfolio of some of Sydney's largest hotels, but each venue kept its own MYOB file, and none of those files were connected. Point of sale figures and daily takings were entered by hand, which meant double handling and mistakes that someone then had to find and fix.
Controls lagged too. Purchase orders were often approved after the money had already been committed, and intercompany transfers had to be journalled and reconciled across several files every month. By the time a consolidated report was ready, leadership was looking at a position that had already moved on, with no reliable read on profitability or cash at any given moment.
From the DWR team
"They had multiple systems doing multiple different things and they had a team of people who were sort of stitching all the information together every month... it was always 4 to 6 weeks behind the reality of what was going on."
Tiernan O'Connor, Director of Customer Success, DWR
The Solution
One instance, every venue inside it
DWR migrated the separate accounting files into a single NetSuite OneWorld instance. Finance can view any one venue or the consolidated group at the same moment, then drill from a report line down to the individual transaction and the documents behind it.
NetSuite OneWorld implementation
NetSuite's open API let DWR connect point of sale, payroll and other key systems, so takings and wages arrive without being keyed in again. Purchasing moved online as well, with tiered approvals and delegation, so spend is signed off before it happens rather than after.
| FUNCTION | NOW RUN IN NETSUITE |
|---|---|
| Consolidation | Every venue and entity in one OneWorld instance |
| Point of sale & payroll | Integrated through NetSuite's open API |
| Purchasing | Multi-tier online PO approval and delegation |
| Supplier bills & payments | PDF attached to each bill, with an approval step before payment |
The Impact
From catching up to planning ahead
Month-end now takes a fraction of the effort it used to, and management works from a single financial view of the group that updates as transactions land. Just as important, the group can grow without adding finance staff to keep the books up.
That capacity has been put to use. Since going live, the group has added 4 or 5 more hotels and expanded into food service. It now uses NetSuite to compare profitability across distinct parts of each venue, from kitchens and poker machines to food and beverage.
| FUNCTION | BEFORE | AFTER |
|---|---|---|
| Month-end close | Manual consolidation across MYOB files | → Dramatically reduced |
| Group reporting | Weeks out of date | → Live, by venue and group |
| Purchasing control | Approved after the event | → Approved online before spend |
| Profitability | Group level only | → By kitchen, gaming and F&B |
In Their Words
Before implementing NetSuite, managing the finance function for the group was manual, complex, time consuming and inefficient. Managing expenditure in a paperless office was a distant dream. With NetSuite we have been able to significantly reduce the amount of time required to complete month end, provide real time visibility into each venue and entity as well as move to provide online transaction paperwork for every purchase.
CFO, Sonnel Hospitality
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What could NetSuite do for your business?
What could NetSuite do for your business? Sydney and Melbourne teams who understand Australian compliance and mid-market operations. This consultation covers the NetSuite OneWorld implementation, the same day result above. TaskDrive, the AI layer, is a separate product evaluated at taskdrive.ai.
No obligation. Straight answers.
Results described are specific to this customer and depend on their starting systems, data quality, implementation scope, and ongoing use of the platform. Individual results vary by organisation. TaskDrive is an independent product and company, separate from DWR.
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