Process Improvements Without the Pain
Continued
The HR and payroll applications now run within the Oracle On Demand data center, located in Austin, Texas. During the one-year transition phase, Marriott UK had to move to Marriott's PeopleSoft-based general ledger, a new expenses solution, and the new payroll application, as well as a new networking infrastructure to allow desktop PCs to communicate. "All of that had to happen at the same time, so we had to find ways of minimizing impact where we could," Rasched recalls. "In the HR and payroll areas, we had the opportunity to effectively do a 'lift and shift,'" thanks to the preceding work Marriott had done.
The organization now uses Oracle E-Business Suite 11i's HR and payroll applications, relying on Hewitt's expertise to help run the processes and Oracle On Demand to host and manage the programs. Rasched's group and the Hewitt team manage the activities between the U.K. hotels, Hewitt, and the Oracle On Demand team. "We will control the treasury side of the payroll, for example; we will maintain the bank accounts and deal with out-of-process requests and emergencies," Rasched says.
Concrete Benefits
In addition to helping to meet its restructuring deadline, what does BPO mean to Marriott? At the top of the list, according to Rasched, are transparency of cost for key business processes and a flexible model that can quickly adapt to the needs of Marriott's rapidly growing business. He adds that individual hotels have the opportunity of reducing their expenses as they move from their standalone payroll applications to the BPO model.
However, cost and process efficiencies are only a piece of the value that the hotels now see, says Rasched. "We are not just giving them a payroll solution. We also give them a whole end-to-end process for regulatory filings, standardization of processes, better cash control, and a maximization of cash as a result of being able to do it all in one place," he explains. "That's entirely facilitated by Oracle E-Business Suite applications, and because we have merged the HR and payroll databases into one data store."
Partnering with Oracle gives Marriott and Hewitt access to industry-leading applications and IT services, as well as implementation expertise gained from the company's extensive experience with global corporations. "Oracle's involvement has been invaluable, and it was one of the major reasons for choosing this partnership," Randall says. "We really felt that Oracle's BPO partnerships and Oracle On Demand services provided the other two legs of the partnership."
"If providers want to have full control over the cost of the operation and run the whole operation independently, obviously that's a feasible choice," says Tibor Beles, vice president for business process outsourcing at Oracle. "But if they prefer to rely on Oracle's IT management expertise and applications management expertise, that is certainly available."
In addition to quickly coming online to serve Marriott's current needs, the applications fit into the company's long-term plans. "Although there are a myriad of payroll platforms that we could have chosen and operated here in the U.K., we were also looking for a model that Marriott could use to expand across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa," Randall says. "Two of the reasons for choosing it were the scalability it can provide and the ability to eventually do multicurrency and multicountry payrolls."
For More Information
Good for Business
Five Keys for BPO Success
Alan Joch (
ajoch@worldpath.net) is a technology writer based in New England who specializes in enterprise, Web, and high-performance-computing applications.
