Success Stories - The Mustique Company
The Organization
Mustique is a secluded 1,400 acre island surrounded by beaches of pure white sand. Officially part of the Grenadines, Mustique is privately owned and operated by The Mustique Company. This exclusive retreat island conjures up images of luxurious and secluded accommodations. There are over eighty-five privately owned villas on Mustique with many available for booking throughout the year.
The Mustique Company’s Mission is:
- To encourage controlled tourism.
- To ensure that the island remains peaceful and only marginally developed.
- To maintain an infrastructure for the local population of Mustique.
The activities of the Mustique Company include all aspects of maintaining the island. In effect anything required to run an entire mini country. These wide ranging activities include but are not limited to:
- Island infrastructure including, water desalination, electricity production and road construction.
- Essential Island services including security, fire department, airport, medical clinic, marina, harbor, importing, telecommunications and technology infrastructure.
- Travel and leisure services including a spa, dive shop, horseback riding stables, tennis courts and a wide variety of water sports.
- Land sales, Villas sales, rentals and construction.
The Challenge
The Mustique Company was using several un-integrated systems and a vast array of manual processes to run the operations of the island. All transactions were captured at source manually, entered to an interim system for the purposes of billing or cost capture and then entered to the financial system for reporting. The financial statements were created manually in Excel. After the financial reporting was complete all transactions that affected the homeowners were re-entered to a separate subledger for homeowner tracking and reporting. It took approximately 3 ½ weeks to close the month. The manual and un-integrated systems were not able to scale to the islands growth and the only way to handle the work load was to hire additional employees. The key problems were:
- Operational systems (or manual processes) not integrated to financials.
- Inventory management, sales and receiving at the warehouse not integrated to financials.
- No Point of Sale at retail operations
- No system for service calls or service call billing
- Manual creation of month end financials
- Complex financial reporting requirements and homeowner reporting requirement
- Internal politics, change integration issues, limited access to skilled labour
Why Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains
BDO Dunwoody was selected to implement the new system based on its extensive experience in Project Management and operational change along with strong skills with finance and operational systems. We suggested Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains to address The Mustique Companies requirements for the following reasons:
Product Strength for Financial Requirements and Integrate to operational systems:
- Microsoft Dynamics GP provided the financial reporting flexibility that the Mustique Company needed to report the monthly financials and produce the information in the format requested by the Homeowners.
- Monthly financials needed to be created direct from the system with no re-enter to Excel. There is only one designated accountant on Mustique and he must be able to produce the financials with a few clicks at the end of the month.
- A fully integrated system is a key requirement for the Mustique Company. All the transactions had to be captured at source in the system to ensure that no data was lost or entered inaccurately. The requirements of the various departments were disparate. For example, The Mustique Company required Point of Sale, Warehouse Management, Purchasing and Receiving, Fixed Asset Tracking, Service Calls as well as Payroll and core financials. All of these different systems come fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics GP. Microsoft Dynamics GP is a non-industry specific ERP system, which provides a wide span of functionality.
Ease of use:
- The Mustique Company would require more than 50 employees using Great Plains in over 15 locations on Mustique and the neighbouring island of St. Vincent. There is one designated accountant and 2 IT professional on staff. Supporting a complex system internally would have proven impossible.
- With a standard Windows interface, Dynamics GP is an easy financial system to learn. Users are able to easily leverage their existing skills with Microsoft products (Excel, Word, etc.) because Dynamics GP uses similar navigation.
- As the staff at the Mustique company changes, new users are able to learn the system easily. This will minimize the learning curve and increase new hire productivity.
Vendor Stability:
- The Mustique Company is located is a remote part of the world. It is critical that they operate technology that is widely recognized and supported. This increases there ability to obtain remote support from skilled professionals.
- Microsoft Dynamics GP runs on the proven industry standard database, Microsoft SQL and is currently in Release 9.0. This is a mature product with a proven track record for stability in the market.
- By using proven technology The Mustique Company will be able to maximize the return on their investment and continue to build on their existing Microsoft technology.
The Solution and the Technology
The new system designed and implemented by BDO, consists of the following Great Plains Modules for Release 8.0 delivered on Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Windows and Terminal Server Technology.
| Operations |
Financials |
Reporting & Tools |
| Service Call Management |
General Ledger |
FRx |
| Compass Point of Sale |
Multicurrency |
Integration Manager |
| Compass Bar Code Price Tags |
Bank Reconciliation |
Crystal Reports |
| Inventory Control |
Payables Management |
Accountable Anyview |
| Purchase Orders |
Payroll/Human Resources |
My Customer |
| Sales Order Processing |
Fixed Asset Management |
Modifier with VBA |
| Preventative Maintenance |
Intercompany |
Field Level Security |
The Results:
- The month end is now complete on the first day of the month. Financials are prepared, reviewed and approved on day 2.
- The elimination of duplicate entry and manual tracking has improved productivity and job satisfaction in the accounting department.
- The elimination of all shadow systems and manual data capture has improved data integrity, accuracy and timelines.
- Today’s transactions are entered today. Access to data is real time and the system is current for all activity that is happening on the island as it happens. This means that management knows:
- How much gas was sold at the gas station today, who bought it, how much they paid for it and what method of payment was used.
- How many bars of soap were bought at the warehouse today, which house bought them and whether they like Coast or Dial.
- How many cars are in the shop for repair and how many have been rented and are on the road.
- How many scuba divers are diving, how many horses are being ridden, how much electricity and waster was used.
- How many hours the employees worked yesterday and how they spend their time, who was fired, who was hired, who is sick and who is on vacation.
