Who are Red Carnation Hotels?
President and founder Beatrice Tollman built Red Carnation Hotels with a vision for service excellence and a passion for generous hospitality. Today the collection proudly stands at 20 exceptional properties around the world, each unique and special, whilst sharing the founding values that define our family-owned and run business.
The Challenge
Even though the business was continuing to flourish with their ever-reliable Dynamics GP solution, the pace at which Microsoft was evolving the product endangered them of no longer being supported by Microsoft, which could leave them open to potential security breaches.
As well as this, the employees of Red Carnation Hotels were having trouble accessing Dynamics GP through the web client on their current GP version & the well documented email remittance GP issue which was going to have a major impact after October 1st 2022.
The decision was made that a Dynamics GP upgrade was required in order to safeguard the future of their current ERP solution.
The Solution
After discussing all the available options with their current ERP partner, Advantage, it was recommended that Red Carnation Hotels upgrade from Dynamics GP 2015 to the latest version of Dynamics GP in order to combat the above issues as well as to futureproof their business. In addition to this, Advantage suggested that Red Carnation Hotels take this opportunity to upgrade their current third-party solutions as well to ensure a completely smooth process.
Before the upgrade could begin, Advantage undertook a thorough technical audit of their current GP system to identify if there were any opportunities to improve the overall performance of the system during the move. As well as reviewing what third party applications had to be upgraded and those that could perhaps be removed as they weren’t being used to help Advantage to formulate a suitable quote. Once this process was completed a quote was delivered and swiftly signed off by the client.
The GP upgrade began with a test upgrade being installed as given how complicated some of the integrations were, it was vital that Red Carnation Hotels thoroughly tested out the new system to see if anything required changing during the upgrade. After this process was completed, it was then onto the upgrade itself.
Why did Red Carnation Hotels choose to continue to work with Advantage?
Red Carnation Hotels decided to stay with Advantage as they had been a customer for many years with a good relationship built up over that time and given how well Advantage knew their existing system setup it was the logical choice to continue progressing this relationship through an upgrade.
The Benefits
The upgrade from Dynamics GP 2015 to the latest version was successfully completed. Some of the benefits realised by the upgrade were:
- Users were able to easily and readily access Dynamics GP via the web client.
- The email remittance issue is no longer a problem now and in the future.
- Reassurance was provided by a proactive support desk, with inherent accountancy skills, and working with a partner that would assist in driving the organisation forward.
Furthermore, it was clear from Red Carnation Hotels that they were extremely happy with the results:
Anne Wrigley, Director of Finance at Red Carnation Hotels was evidently pleased “The transition from GP 2015 to the latest version was completed in a fast & efficient way considering the complexities of the system & we’re already reaping the rewards of the upgrade. We cannot thank Phil, Fiaz and the GP team at Advantage enough for seamlessly guiding us through the whole process end-to-end, we would 100% recommend Advantage to any business looking to upgrade their Dynamics GP system”.
Phil Talman, Account Manager at Advantage added “We’re absolutely delighted that Red Carnation Hotels is reaping the full benefits from upgrading their Dynamics GP solution. After working with Red Carnation Hotels for many years now, we are looking to continue to both maintain and enhance our relationship through our ongoing Dynamics GP support”.
Conclusion
With the Dynamics GP upgrade now complete, Red Carnation Hotels now has the ability to maximise their use of the system to transform their day-to-day business activity with a solution that helps safeguard the future of their business.
