Key responsibilities

• Management, promotion and operation of 68 hotels in England, Scotland and Wales

Jarvis needed to increase the speed and flexibility of its financial reporting capabilities, both to improve support for central and regional budgeting processes, and to ensure that the executive team was in receipt of current performance indicators for the business.

The company's accounting software, DREAM, provided only limited reporting functionality, and whilst it had reviewed alternative packaged solutions, Jarvis found these expensive and complex to use.

As a result, the company was obliged to commission the services of consultants whenever it needed to develop or amend a report. This was a costly and time-consuming exercise, with each new report or enhancement taking approximately four weeks to complete.

Jarvis purchased Solution 7's reporting tool, Report 7, which had been developed exclusively for use with the DREAM accounting package.

Report 7 allowed users to design and amend any type of financial report in the familiar environment of Excel, without in-depth knowledge of the DREAM database. Jarvis users can now create their own bespoke reports in under an hour and make any amendments in less than 10 minutes.

By implementing Report 7, Jarvis has already made significant savings on consultancy design fees as the product provided a return on investment within three months of purchase.

In addition, the finance department is now able to offer a faster, more flexible and responsive service to its hotel managers and executives, as well as increasing the value of its contribution to the company's overall budgetary process.

Jarvis now plans to rollout Report 7 to its purchasing department and has approached Solution 7 to undertake some bespoke development work on the product.