Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide has fully deployed BirchStreet’s procure-to-pay platform across its owned and managed North American properties. As the hospitality industry leader in procure-to-pay automation, the cloud-based BirchStreet platform helps its customers increase efficiency and visibility in all purchasing related activities, drive compliance and financial controls, and improve operations resulting in increased profitability.
In July, Starwood concluded its deployment of BirchStreet’s eProcurement and AP automation in all Starwood’s managed assets in North America to streamline its P2P business processes and generate real-time business intelligence. The BirchStreet modules are integrated with Starwood’s financial system. After successfully launching P2P in pilot properties in the U.S. and Canada, all North American properties were rolled out in consecutive waves.
“From the creation of the initial business case, through IT design/testing/development, piloting the system, adjustments from key learnings, to the training and on-boarding of the hotels, the cooperative spirit of everyone has been outstanding,” said Tad Wampfler, chief supply chain officer at Starwood.
To prove the success of the P2P implementation project, Starwood tracked key metrics:
- More than 14,000 invoices each week no longer require manual entry, a 70-percent (and growing) reduction.
- As the Starwood P2P eco-system matures, the system will automatically process more than 1 million invoices per year in North America while providing a vastly improved user experience, better financial controls and spend visibility, which will enable greater savings.