NY Marriott Marquis Perfects Purchasing On a Large Scale
The New York Marriott Marquis is one of the largest Marriott hotels in the world, with almost 2,000 guest rooms, 100,000 square feet of banquet/meeting space and several restaurants and bars. It literally takes up an entire city block, in the middle of Times Square. The hotel also houses the 1,600-seat Marquis Theater. On any given day, between 5,000 and 10,000 guests and visitors can pass through its doors. Therefore, the New York Marriott Marquis needed to fine-tune and streamline its purchasing operations for such an enormous setting.
The operation ran on an Adaco client-server solution for many years, but 
purchasing was becoming more complex and time consuming. Although other systems were considered, one of Adaco's advantages as a procurement system has been its self-contained structure: all vendor, product, outlet, usage, analysis, tracking and payment data are stored and accessible in one system. Coinciding with the hotel's adoption of the Microsoft.NET platform Adaco was readying its .NET product that would leverage the inherent power of SQL.
purchasing was becoming more complex and time consuming. Although other systems were considered, one of Adaco's advantages as a procurement system has been its self-contained structure: all vendor, product, outlet, usage, analysis, tracking and payment data are stored and accessible in one system. Coinciding with the hotel's adoption of the Microsoft.NET platform Adaco was readying its .NET product that would leverage the inherent power of SQL.Adaco .NET is a fully integrated purchasing and operational control system that facilitates best practices and controls. Adaco .NET creates a one-on-one relationship between the price and quantity of goods delivered and purchasing documents, improving cost controls. On-line catalogs decentralize and simplify ordering and can be programmed to reflect requisition policies consistent with the Marriott Marquis' operating procedures.
Installation was simple; the product base was automatically copied from the stand-alone Adaco Eclipse to the .NET server over a network. Adaco .NET is currently supporting 100 users, from outlet managers to accounting personnel. In addition to a 24-hour kitchen, the Marriott Marquis has six full-service restaurants and two Starbucks. Everything, from beverages to housekeeping items, is ordered using Adaco .NET property-wide. Accounts payable are exported daily to an Oracle/PeopleSoft system but the payment history remains available to Adaco .NET users to apply a full suite of management and operational analysis reports; price comparisons of current buys are also easily accessible.
Shared benefits
Every level of management benefits from the system. Outlet managers become more familiar with hotel products, making them more aware of specifications like pack size, pack description and price. Annual budgets are imported, and a Checkbook Accounting feature in Adaco .NET provides outlet managers with a real-time view of their budget area. At the moment an order is placed they can simultaneously see how much of their budget has been used for the period and how much remains. As outlet managers are held accountable for their budget, the Checkbook Accounting feature simplifies adhering to it.
Every level of management benefits from the system. Outlet managers become more familiar with hotel products, making them more aware of specifications like pack size, pack description and price. Annual budgets are imported, and a Checkbook Accounting feature in Adaco .NET provides outlet managers with a real-time view of their budget area. At the moment an order is placed they can simultaneously see how much of their budget has been used for the period and how much remains. As outlet managers are held accountable for their budget, the Checkbook Accounting feature simplifies adhering to it.
The Marriott Marquis sees increased hour and wage productivity for both associate and management staff by electronically combining multiple purchase requisitions from multiple outlets for multiple products with mixed account numbers into individual vendor purchase orders (VPOs) that are automatically validated by the appropriate receiving documents. In addition, the process reduces time-consuming and unsustainable paper trails and duplication of product ordering. Employee cross-training in specific Adaco tasks enables more efficient and flexible scheduling, while menu engineering functions such as ingredient-level costing keeps inventory turns high and goods fresh to table.
Jonathan Pilliod is a purchasing manager for the Marriott Marquis, where he has held various positions of increasing responsibility for 13 years. Prior to working for Marriott, he owned and operated a full-service, award-winning restaurant on Long Island that operated out of a historic landmark for 24 years.
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