Nottingham Venues Modernises Financials with Percipient and Sage Intacct

Hospitality scale up drives ambitious growth plans and saves 25% in efficiencies with Sage Intacct Partner of the Year

About Nottingham Venues

A wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Nottingham, Nottingham Venues is a collection of independent venues specialising in meetings and events, set in the beautiful grounds of the University of Nottingham. By bringing together all of the University’s conferencing, hotel and event spaces under one iconic brand, Nottingham Venues is uniquely positioned to host a range of events, from student accommodation to a four star hotel experience.

Nottingham Venues owns The Orchard Hotel & Restaurant, The Jubilee Hotel & Conferences, East Midlands Conference Centre, and Campus Venues.

In June 2022, the venue specialist exited from parent company De Vere Hotels and acquired a new property, Hugh Stewart Manor House, before consolidating and rebranding as Nottingham Venues.

Scaling up with Sage Intacct

Having exited De Vere Hotels in 2022, Nottingham Venues needed a new finance system to replace the Sage X3 one it had inherited. Following a review of the market, the team selected Sage Intacct from Percipient based on its fit for the organisation’s scale-up phase.

“Having evaluated both Sage X3 and other solutions on the market, Sage Intacct stood out by a mile,” comments Libby Wain, Financial Controller, Nottingham Venues. “We have a relatively small finance team, and needed a finance system which was not only easy to use, but could bring in intelligence to free up resources and scale as we grow.

“Sage Intacct’s ease of use, intuitive interface and the way it allowed us to drill down into detail in a click, as needed, went above and beyond our requirements, and made our decision very easy.

“Our initial demo was fantastic and we instantly had confidence in the system. In comparison to Sage X3 and Sage 200 which we also reviewed, it was in a different league. Built for a modern, intelligence-driven way of working, it was far and above the best system.”

Game changing capabilities

Since going live, Sage Intacct has been a game changer for the finance team at Nottingham Venues as Libby explains:

“Going live with Sage Intacct was so smooth and because the system is so easy to use, the team just got on with using it straight away. We currently use it for Purchase Ledger predominantly, with plans to extend this to our Sales Ledger soon. For us, the magic of Sage Intacct is that it allows us to click on a line and access every related post or invoice. We’ve just gone through an audit and this capability has made the process so much easier. The speed at which we have been able to extract information really can’t be underestimated.

Efficiency savings of 25%

Sage Intacct has eradicated the use of Excel and manual processes for Nottingham Venues, which has not only streamlined finance processes, freeing up substantial amounts of time, but eliminated errors and inaccuracies which come with re-keying things. One area where this is delivering immense value is in more accurate P&L reviews at the end of each month as Libby identifies:

“In our most recent P&L review, we spotted an anomaly for March which without Sage Intacct could have gone undetected or un-investigated. Because the system is so intelligent, we were able to quickly investigate, learn that it was an item which had been coded wrongly, and rectify without losing any time.

The venue company is also using a new purchase order (PO) system to expedite processing and elevate accuracy. Because everything is now in a digital record, resources are freed up, response times are more efficient and accuracy is improved.

“Since deploying Sage Intacct, we are operating so much more efficiently and have saved around 25% in time across different processes. To free up more than a day each week is huge and has enabled us to expand the value of the department, driving greater value and bringing intelligence from which to plan and pursue growth.”

Enhancing Forecasting with Sage Intacct Planning (SIP)

In supporting this capability further, Nottingham Venues is about to go live with Sage Intacct Planning (SIP) to refine planning and forecasting.

“Sage Intacct Planning will allow us to refine our budgeting, making it more dynamic to enhance our forecasts. Because the system allows scenario planning, we can look at the impact of adjusting different variables, whether it’s the impact of increasing or decreasing resources or bookings across  front of house, food and beverage, sales and events, marketing, housekeeping, kitchen or maintenance.

Fully integrated with Sage Intacct, SIP will complement and amplify the core capabilities within Sage Intacct, to facilitate one, meaningful, intelligent version of the truth, enabling confidence, control, and collaboration.

Because SIP is based on the same principles of Sage Intacct it simply pulls through data from Sage Intacct, and takes GL accounts as well as the previous year’s budget. It can extract and process data at an accounting, departmental and dimension level to create an informed and intelligent forecast based on all of the relevant facts and figures, from budget drivers, to revenue calculations driving cost bases and staffing and resources. It can map data from either Sage Intacct or external sources to budget lines, taking into account revenue; wages and salaries; overheads; energy usage and sustainability metrics; as well as actuals.

This comprehensive, live, view, will help foster collaboration across Nottingham Venues’ forecasting, allowing departments to feed into the budget process to create a forecast which closely aligns with performance, market dynamics, variables and intelligence, rather than simply looking at the previous year and adding or taking away a percentage.

A Trusted Partnership

“Percipient instilled immense trust in us from day one. It’s not uncommon for someone to sell or demo a system never to be seen again, however Percipient set a whole new standard,” Libby concludes. “Laurie was our first point of contact and remains at the end of the phone should we ever need to contact him – no tickets or convoluted processes – just a reassuring presence we know is there to support us.

“The team really is so professional, responsive and lovely to deal with which is a rare thing in this industry. We love their ethos and it’s testament to our trust in Percipient and Sage Intacct that we extended the solution with the purchase of SIP. We’re looking forward to seeing more and more value both via forecasting and through expanding our use of the functionality in Sage Intacct itself as we continue our own growth journey.”