BACKGROUND
Donohoe Hospitality is a leading hotel management company with a portfolio of premium hotels operating under the Marriott, Hilton, and Intercontinental Hotels Group brands. In an industry that requires continued innovation to deliver an exemplary experience to guests, senior VP and CFO Jack Fritsche recognized the need to also modernize the company’s financial systems, namely its payables.
“Prior to CSI Paysystems we were processing payments through paper checks and ACH. The paper trail was costly in many ways, and I couldn’t effectively track my vendor payments with ACH.” In an effort to replace paper checks with a more efficient electronic payment system, Fritsche chose CSI Paysystems.
SOLUTION
Donohoe Hospitality was using the M3 Accounting + Analytics platform, which integrated with CSI Paysystems. After initial training by the CSI team, Fritsche says it was a smooth transition. “Getting in and using CSI’s platform was easy. The process is very similar to how I set up my recurring ACH payments within M3.” Fritsche cites two primary benefits that the company experienced almost immediately:
- Eliminating paper checks also eliminates the costs that go with it, such as
printing, check stock, manual processing, and postage. “Every check that I
don’t cut saves us significant dollars and time.” - Receiving a rebate every month based on card spend is new revenue to
the company. “Between the cost savings and the rebate revenue, I feel like
I’m winning twice!”
The payment system rollout was not completely flawless, but the experience shows the importance of having a collaborative partner like CSI that you can trust to resolve issues that arise. The first hurdle was vendor enrollment. CSI’s vendor enrollment team achieves extraordinary results through a proven communications campaign, but Fritsche had concerns that this campaign was not the best approach for Donohoe. “Our company is very relationship driven. CSI responded very well to my concerns and adapted their communication plan. We still have many opportunities ahead, but together we’ve made some great progress in converting our vendors to CSI Paysystems.”