HispanicBusiness

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 03/18/13 -- Adaptive Planning, the worldwide leader in cloud-based business analytics solutions for companies and nonprofits of all sizes, today announced that Vail Resorts, the leading mountain resort operator in the United States and a publicly held company traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: MTN), implemented Adaptive Planning to consolidate and benchmark financial data across properties in an automated fashion instead of the Excel-based process, which required manual data entry.

The Vail Resorts family of companies employs more than 13,000 peak-season employees across five segments, hospitality, retail, transportation, real estate and development and corporate. The finance team faced a challenging planning environment because each of the divisions and locations was relying on separate accounting systems. In addition each division used a separate chart of accounts. Vail Resorts wanted the ability to consolidate and benchmark across properties in an automated fashion instead of the Excel-based process, which required manual data entry.

"We wanted the ability to do all of our formula based planning, run reports and compare spas across ten properties to determine profitability," said Wayne McLellan, Jr., Senior Manager Lodging Finance, RockResorts and Vail Resorts Hospitality. "In addition, the ability to standardize our planning model across the organization and make changes to variable expenses and have that automatically roll up was an important requirement. After comparing multiple options, Adaptive Planning was a no brainer because of its robust functionality, affordable cost, and customizable options that met our planning needs."

After selecting Adaptive Planning, Vail Resorts implemented the solution with 10 hours of professional support and rolled out to 58 users across two instances. Since implementing Adaptive Planning, Vail Resorts has experienced an increase in engagement among department heads in the planning process. Now each department head creates their own budget in Adaptive Planning, freeing up the Director of Finance to focus on the drivers that impact the business. Vail Resorts business model is driven by rooms occupied (occupancy percent), food and beverage capture rate (#of guests served a meal to as a percent of occupied rooms), golf rounds, and spa treatments. The business is also highly seasonal with the winter high season attracting a more affluent customer demographic vs. the summer season which is considered a value season. Now, in Adaptive Planning, they can model out their staffing and labor costs based on the projected occupancy using base-plus-variable labor cost formulas.

"The forecasting process used to take 2-3 hours per individual for more than 25 participants and now takes just 20-30 minutes," says McLellan. "Apply these time savings and we have seen a reduction in time spent of more than 56 hours. Strategic decision making has improved as a result and we now review a 90 day forecast each month and run reports to compare budgets/forecasts to actual and to prior forecasts. With Adaptive Planning we have a much better ability to manage the top line."