At its two hotels in the Cayman Islands, the company sells all-inclusive packages at five hotels, including lodging, dining, cocktails, scuba diving, and other daily activities.
Additionally, the company operates a five-star hotel in the Turks and Caicos Islands. This hotel features six food and beverage outlets, an eight-treatment room luxury spa, retail operations, and a watersports and land-based excursions company.
Business case
Previously, JEM Worldwide used a disparate set of systems, including Microsoft Dynamics SL ERP, SilverWare POS, Resort Data Processing PMS, WebRez, and Micros. Because there was no synchronization between the systems, most accounting and reporting tasks had to be completed manually in Excel, which was both time-consuming and sometimes resulted in mistakes or oversights.
After receiving another price increase notice from one of its software vendors, the company concluded that its legacy IT infrastructure had become too expensive to operate while failing to scale to its growing needs. This lack of room for growth is what led the company to start looking into different POS, business management, and PMS solutions on the market.
The ideal solution would provide an advanced, centralized platform for effective management and reporting across all business functions. JEM Worldwide also wanted its new solution and processes hosted in a fully cloud-based environment to ensure maximum agility and adaptability.
Solution
After evaluating several solutions, JEM Worldwide decided to implement LS Retail’s all-in-one software platform for hotels, LS Central for hotels. LS Central extends Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP, with in-depth hospitality functionality, making it the ideal solution for hotels and resorts that also offer elements of retail, food service, and activities like JEM Worldwide. "The main reason we chose LS Central was that it is an all-encompassing solution coming with tools for ERP and hospitality management," says Brad Barnett, President at JEM Worldwide.
LS Central for hotels unites all business processes, including finances, PMS and reservations, retail, food service, bookings, inventory, and supply chain management, into a single platform.
The company was especially impressed by Bookings for LS Central, the reservation management software that extends LS Central. With Bookings for LS Central, businesses can let customers reserve various services alongside their other sales and effortlessly manage them all in one system. Being able to streamline the booking experience and effectively manage resources, without continually switching platforms, influenced the decision-making process significantly.
To replace its largely on-premises IT infrastructure with LS Central in a cloud-based environment, JEM Worldwide chose local LS Retail partner Optimus Business Transformation. Optimus Business Transformation is a Software as a Service (SaaS) expert with a wealth of knowledge and a proven record of delivering LS Retail solutions to Caribbean retail and hospitality businesses.
The management team at Optimus Business Transformation realized that, in addition to the RFP process, knowing the end users' needs and their business environment was essential to delivering the best outcomes. The team flew to Tampa and Turks & Caicos where they conducted staff interviews, went over procedures, and got more deeply involved in the day-to-day operations at the resorts.
The implementation was divided into seven phases:
- Implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and LS Central in the first locations
- Procure-to-Pay (P2P) process
- Accounts Payables (AP) automation
- Analytics for LS Central and consolidation setup
- Bookings for LS Central for water sports, scuba diving, and other activities
- Implement LS Central in remaining locations
- Evaluation of AI-driven technologies for potential adoption
Despite some initial challenges, Optimus Business Transformation successfully implemented the new solution at four sites under budget and scope. In fact, the implementation team was also able to incorporate features related to Purchase Order Processing (POP) that were originally scheduled at a later stage. Because of how efficient the initial implementation was, JEM Worldwide decided to further invest in its new software solution, deciding to add more features, capabilities, controls, and automate its processes even more.
The implementation success was largely due to the support from the team at JEM Worldwide and the availability of Optimus resources. The teams ensured that all expectations, project scopes, and guidelines were clearly communicated and that every location implementing the new system followed the same procedure. This standardized approach made the implementation process much easier and laid the groundwork for future rollouts.
Though the project for JEM Worldwide is still nearing completion, the company is already seeing the benefits of the LS Central for hotels solution. The company now has an efficient, future-proof system to support its operations and provide its customers with a seamless resort experience.
