Casino Financial System in the Cloud
Case StudySanta Ana Star Casino Hotel
Streamlining financial operations in the cloud for Santa Ana Star Casino Hotel
In 1993, Santa Ana Star Casino Hotel became the first Native American-owned casino to operate in New Mexico. Featuring over 1,600 certified slot machines, table games, dining, bowling and more, the casino prides itself on cultural authenticity of the great Southwest. Growth in popularity over the years has opened new opportunities to expand operations, and in time, has demanded modernized infrastructure to support this growth.
Challenge
Santa Ana Star’s finance team was operating on a legacy, on-premises accounting system that became increasingly unreliable and lacked remote work capabilities. In addition, getting support for the system was complicated and time-consuming. Month-end close was a cumbersome process because reports had to be consolidated from a variety of file types. Moreover, expansions in operational complexity meant that adding a business entity to the financial system would have to be built from the ground up.
Stefanie Radzinski, Chief Financial Officer for the casino, recognized the opportunity for efficiencies that could be realized by cloud ERP. “With an on-premises system, ours would go down all the time and then you’re just locked out of your system. Or the power goes out, and things happen constantly,” said Radzinski. “Being in the cloud, you can work anywhere, and you’re good. If you have a power outage, you can just pick up and move.” She and her team set out to find a better solution that was flexible to meet the needs of the growing casino.
“The core implementation team was wonderful, and the experience with the support team’s been phenomenal. With [ArcticAscend support], I just send an email, and then literally they get right back to me. It’s been very rare that I’ve waited 24 hours to get a response back.”
Solution
Knowing they wanted to expand within their Microsoft cloud ecosystem, Santa Ana Star Casino Hotel teamed up with Arctic IT to implement Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management. The first phase of the project focused on implementation of the core casino financials, including:
- General Ledger
- Budgeting
- Banking
- Fixed Assets
- Accounts Payable
- Power BI
- Financial reporting
- And an interface to SharePoint for secure document storage.
A strength of the Dynamics 365 platform is its ability to streamline financial tracking for multi-entity operations. When it came time to expand the system to include an entity for the casino’s transportation company, it was a much faster implementation process. Radzinski appreciates this capability, commenting, “What I really like about Dynamics is it’s not completely separate in terms of my main account structure. If I add an account, I can select it and boom, I don’t have to go back and do it to another company. It’s nice to be able to use the same chart of accounts; let’s create one, count it, and go through the same templates. That’s really smooth.”
Throughout the project, Arctic IT worked side-by-side with the casino to make sure core business processes were streamlined where possible. With a dependency on exporting financials into several external systems, including payroll, inventory general ledger, and vendor procurement, the Excel reports were a big operational improvement for Radzinski’s team. “Our last system was manually intensive, and this one is less so. The templates are easier. It’s quicker if there’s an error. It’s also a lot easier to export information, so exporting a trial balance is easy. That was very hard in the old system. To be able to pull information to Excel and to be able to drill down faster, that’s the things I like the most about it.”
After the new casino financial system was implemented, the casino’s finance team transitioned to Arctic IT’s ArcticAscend application support services. The services provide Santa Ana Star with 24/7 U.S.-based help desk, system updates and upgrade management, and ongoing training for users so they can use the system with confidence.
Results
The new financial system for Santa Ana Star Casino Hotel was implemented on budget and in an agreed upon timeline. With Dynamics 365, Radzinski can now post journal entries securely from wherever work takes her. She has also been able to streamline reporting into external systems with the consistency of Excel exports.
Regarding the ongoing ArcticAscend services, Radzinski’s experience has been very positive. The team at Arctic IT has been quick to respond to support tickets and helpful in walking Santa Ana Star through issues as they arise. In addition, Radzinski appreciates how the team is making sure they are always up-to-date on the most recent version. “The backups and the updates are amazing. On our on-premises system, we relied internally to make sure we kept it updated, and we didn’t really do the best job of that. One of the nice things about Dynamics is [Arctic IT] forces me to update twice a year. To have somebody keeping an eye on it for us and making sure we’re up to date, that’s really nice. It’s like someone’s looking out for you.”
When asked about her advice for other tribal casinos considering a financial platform in the cloud, Radzinski responded, “It’s painful to switch systems. It’s painful to do something that you’ve done forever and that you figured it out, and then to go someplace new. And then even still, it’s not pain free right now, because I’m still learning, but I can see the potential. I’m so glad, and not one part of me regrets doing it.”
Ready to elevate your casino’s financial operations in the cloud?