Gaming and Entertainment Group Streamlines and Simplifies SAP Financial Reporting
Tsogo Sun harnesses the power of GL Wand to improve its reporting processes and eliminate expensive external specialists
Challenge
Cilliers de Klerk, System Support Analyst at Tsogo Sun, said, “Given the sheer size of the hotel chain and the obvious complexity of its business structure, having a constant and clear picture of its finances is crucial to the effective operation of the business.”
“The nature of the hospitality business, especially across such a diverse and large organization, means there are constant requests for ad hoc reporting directly from SAP. That meant bulk downloads from the SAP business system for one thing; for another, we have no in-house ABAP skills, so we had to rely on costly third parties to provide the necessary expertise.”
He added that the creation of ABAP reports itself is a time-consuming process, depending on several steps, including the creation of a specification, creation of the report, testing of the report, and then deploying the report.
These issues meant the analysts tasked with producing reports were under pressure, while the consumers of the report—business people in charge of operational issues—were experiencing frustration in delays to receiving the information required to make accurate and sound decisions.
Solution
When de Klerk and other members of the Tsogo Sun technology department saw and experienced insightsoftware’s GL Wand demonstrated at the 2010 annual SAPHILA Conference, they immediately recognized it as the ideal solution to meet their reporting challenges. Such was the confidence in the GL Wand solution that it was implemented at Tsogo Sun just months later: By February 2011, the software was deployed to 20 users ahead of the hotel group’s year-end.
“At that stage, we were on GL Wand version 3.30 and SAP ECC5,” said de Klerk. “No other systems or solutions were considered as the demonstration of the solution gave us complete confidence that it could solve issues that had plagued us for years.” Subsequently, he said Tsogo Sun has upgraded to GL Wand 4.06 and SAP ECC6.
Remarkably, de Klerk said practically no training was required to get GL Wand up and running and delivering the reports required by the business. “We purchased 20 licences and assigned them to people who were all experienced Excel users,” he said. “With their knowledge of the spreadsheets, the level of training was basic. Once we presented them with a demo, there was zero resistance to the new system, as the users could easily see the benefits of working with GL Wand.”
“We no longer need to rely on expensive report development by external ABAP specialists, as it is unnecessary to have these skills to produce SAP-based reports with GL Wand.”
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