A pre-emptive and smooth service is especially important in the tourism industry. This applies to the fast and correct processing of payments and refunds, such as those that regularly occur with hotel bookings. However, in order to be able to act promptly and target oriented, the relevant finance departments have to maintain a precise overview of the current financial situation at all times. This is especially the „case „for internationally active players such as the Bad Arolsen-Based company H-Hotels GmbH, which operates many hotels in various European countries. In addition to high-quality accommodation for business travellers and holiday guests, the family-run hotel group with around 2,500 employees also offers a range of additional services for the organisation of meetings and conferences.
However, from the treasury management’s point of view, the daily work processes in such a multi-layered business field go hand in hand are accompanied by a with a number of special requirements for which the conventional procedures only prove to be adequate to a limited extent. From the treasury management point of view, the everyday work processes in such a multi-layered business area are accompanied by a number of special requirements for which the conventional procedures only prove to be partially sufficient. For this reason, after an internal exploration, H-Hotels GmbH made a conscious decision to introduce the Treasury Management System of Litreca AG with which the work processes can be optimised in a flexible manner and designed for the future.
Meeting the special requirements of the tourism industry
As one of the biggest challenges in everyday practice, H-Hotels GmbH notes the general fact that the tourism industry uses many specific financial management systems, which are difficult to coordinate with one other. Not only does this lead to increased expenditure of time in many work steps. At the same time, these coordination problems increase the risk of errors to a considerable degree; especially when expanding into other European countries, they work with formats Datev and Excel, which are widely used in Germany.
As an internationally active player, H-Hotels GmbH is also confronted with financial movements in foreign currencies on a daily basis, which require special attention from treasurers. This is especially true when the corresponding financial movements involve different bank accounts of company subsidiaries, each of which is subject to separate regulations. In these cases in particular, there has often been a lack of a supporting system that, with its automated work processes, provides both more transparency and efficiency in commercial processing. Generally, the software should also have a multi-level system for approving payments in order to guarantee the general security standards of H-Hotels GmbH for outgoing payments.
In addition, the company values importance to the development of a centralised treasury management system that can react flexibly to future developments. In addition to the mapping of current business activities, the possible expansion options of the system plays a decisive role. With a structure of more than 100 group-international companies with more than 500 different bank accounts, functions for optimised enterprise resource planning (ERP) are of particular interest for the H-Hotels GmbH group in this context. Another focus is on the efficient management of different cash pools within the group, as well as on system solutions for the successful support of future internationalisation processes.
How H-Hotels GmbH benefits from the introduction of the Ltc|treasury system
In addition to the attractive price tag, the H-Hotels GmbH attributes its decision in favour of the software, to its modular structure, which enables prompt and flexible reactions to future developments. At the moment, the system is mainly used at H-Hotels at the interface between banks and financial accounting, whereby the system constantly updates the account transactions from the banks and automatically transfers them to the accounting.
Since Ltc|treasury is also ideally suited for the management of different currencies and facilitates communication with foreign financial institutions via the Electronic Billing & Customer Support System (EBCS), it optimally fulfils the company-specific requirements on further levels as well. Accordingly, H-Hotels GmbH cites the holistic processing of payment transactions as one of the greatest advantages of the system implementation, secondary only to a sound basis for downstream and short-term liquidity planning. As a uniform platform, the system also allows more transparent and efficient communication with the various banking institutions in a variety of situations.
In order to be able to optimally exploit the potential of the software, H-Hotels GmbH also intends to introduce a new ERP system in the immediate future, through which short-term liquidity planning can be shifted profoundly to the treasury management system. In general, the system enjoys a high level of acceptance within the workforce, with H-Hotels GmbH citing the early involvement of all relevant employees in project planning and implementation as their key success criterion.
