From the burger to the balance sheet – what a unified casino operation really looks like
Casino and hospitality properties often operate several distinct lines of business within the same organization. A typical setup might look like:
- Gaming
- Hotel operations
- Food and beverage
- Retail stores
- Events and entertainment venues
- Spa
- Golf course and more
Each has different workflows, staffing needs, and technology requirements.
The challenge is that these areas are often supported by separate systems. Point of sale, inventory, procurement, finance, loyalty, and customer service may all operate independently, with integrations or manual processes connecting them.
In a recent webinar, we sat down with TribalHub and Amicis Solutions to discuss the operational impact the use of these separate systems has on casinos. “This fragmentation is where the cost lives,” said Matt Borkowski, director of business applications sales at Arctic IT.
Those costs include the obvious expenses from software and vendor support, but they also include staff time, duplicated data, reconciliation work, delayed reporting, and the effort required to maintain integrations.
The Reality of Running Several Businesses Under One Roof
Gaming and hospitality organizations manage a wide range of business functions at the same time. A guest may visit a restaurant, shop at a retail location, use a loyalty program, stay at the hotel, and interact with several employees during the same visit.
Behind those experiences are finance teams, procurement staff, warehouse teams, restaurant operators, retail employees, and IT.
In many environments, those teams are using separate applications. A vendor may need to be created in several systems. The same inventory item may appear in restaurant software, procurement tools, warehouse systems, and finance. Replicating all this data across systems leaves room for data to fall out of sync, and integrations require ongoing maintenance.
These issues also affect reporting. Finance and operations teams may have to wait for overnight integrations, consolidated reporting, or manual processes before they can see current information.
The good news is there’s a much faster way. Let's walk through that with a story from a food-and-beverage sale all the way to a financial report.
Following a Food and Beverage Transaction from Sale to Finance
When it comes to casino food and beverage, many systems can be involved in a single transaction.
A guest orders a hamburger at an on-property restaurant. The ingredients were purchased from vendors, received into inventory, stored, transferred to the appropriate location, and then used by the kitchen. The single sale affects inventory, cost, revenue, and financial reporting.
If the guest adds avocado, the transaction becomes even more involved.
If you’re using Dynamics 365 for your Food and Beverage system, your Finance system, and your Inventory system on one platform, the added ingredient can be reflected in the bill of materials used for the recipe. This allows the organization to account for the actual ingredient consumption associated with the sale.
“You know exactly what that hamburger cost you, even when they put avocado on it,” commented Tom Lansing, director of business development at Amicis Solutions. “But it also drives a really accurate signal into your supply chain.”
This level of detail can improve inventory costing, forecasting, and visibility, because the system is accounting for what was actually sold and consumed. No additional systems or integrations required.
How Disconnected Systems Affect Daily Operations
When different parts of the property rely on different platforms, additional work is needed to move information between them:
- IT teams may need to maintain multiple integrations.
- Finance teams may need to verify that transactions posted correctly.
- Procurement teams may manage vendor information in more than one place.
- Inventory reporting may depend on manual data from warehouses, restaurants, bars, and other locations being consolidated correctly.
Reporting is another area where these dependencies become visible. In a fragmented environment, leaders may be working with information that is a day or more behind or waiting for several systems to complete their processes before reports can be finalized.
A unified platform is a way to reduce these dependencies and make operational information available more consistently and expediently across departments.
Using a Common Data Model Across Finance, Supply Chain, and Commerce with Dynamics 365
A platform solution like Microsoft Dynamics 365 includes applications for accounting (Finance), inventory (Supply Chain Management), retail (Commerce), and food and beverage management within the same system. The common data model foundation allows information such as vendors and inventory items to be maintained centrally and used across the relevant applications.
Food and Beverage Management on Dynamics 365
Access to certain information can still be controlled by role and business need. For example, an item used in a restaurant does not have to appear in a retail environment where it is not relevant.
The benefit is that the casino can reduce duplicate records and the number of integrations required to keep different systems aligned.
Financial Visibility and Reconciliation
The finance team is one of the primary beneficiaries of more connected operational data.
In many casino environments, finance may have to wait for revenue audits, inventory counts, and integrations before reporting can be completed. With a single platform for finance, supply chain, and commerce, transactions generated anywhere within the system can provide more immediate visibility into revenue and costs.
Sample Casino Dashboard in Dynamics 365 Finance
For advanced operational assistance, Dynamics 365 Copilot and AI Agents can be enabled to help with reconciliation and exception handling. Routine items that match can potentially be processed automatically, while finance staff focus on exceptions that require review.
Preview of Dynamics 365 Copilot
This can give finance teams more time to focus on budgeting, planning, forecasting, and other forward-looking activities.
Inventory Management and Replenishment
Gaming organizations may operate a central warehouse, cold storage, and multiple restaurant or retail locations. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management can track inventory across these locations and support activities such as receiving, picking, packing, counting, shipping, and transfers.
This comes in handy for demand planning and reorder processes. Based on configuration, the system can help suggest what to purchase, when to purchase it, and which vendor to use.
For food and beverage operations, recipe-level consumption can also provide a more accurate inventory signal because ingredients are reduced based on actual sales activity.
Home Screen in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
Guest Service and Transaction History
Connected commerce data can also support customer service. Within Dynamics 365, a customer profile can track recent purchases, loyalty information, transaction history, and other available customer data. This allows employees to have more context when assisting a guest with a return, receipt request, previous purchase, or loyalty interaction.
“People want to be known, they want to be recognized, and they, of course, want good service,” said Tom while discussing the full transaction lifecycle in Dynamics.
The same information can also support centralized customer service or call center functions, where staff may need to review transactions that occurred at different locations across the property.
Preview of Dynamics 365 Commerce
Analytics and AI with Connected Data
Microsoft Power BI dashboards help bring key data to light within the system such as sales activity, returns, discounts, payment information, inventory usage, and waste.
Copilot and AI agents can be added on as additional tools for working with organizational data. AI is more difficult to use effectively when data is distributed across several disconnected systems. By consolidating data into one platform, users can perform broader analysis or apply AI tools.
A more unified data environment makes it easier to analyze information across finance, retail, and supply chain functions.
Implementing in Phases
When asked whether organizations already using Dynamics applications need to implement everything at once, Matt responded, “We would often recommend implementing in phases.” For example, an organization implementing Dynamics 365 Finance or Supply Chain Management could add point-of-sale and restaurant functionality later.
This phased approach can reduce the amount of organizational change occurring at one time while still allowing the property to move toward a more integrated technology environment over time.
The Case for a Unified Casino Operation
Fragmentation is one of the most common operational challenges in casino and hospitality environments.
A single restaurant transaction can involve point of sale, inventory, procurement, cost analysis, and finance. Across an entire property, those connections become much more complex.
Bringing finance, supply chain, retail, and food and beverage operations into a shared Dynamics 365 environment can
- reduce duplicate data,
- remove the need for integrations,
- reduce costs
- improve reporting,
- and provide more consistent information across departments.
For organizations evaluating their current systems, it is recommended to start by reviewing where data is duplicated, where teams depend on overnight integrations or manual reconciliation, and where disconnected systems are making everyday operations more difficult. If you’re ready to discuss what a unified casino platform can look like for you, connect with Arctic IT today. We are trusted by casinos to implement ERP and POS systems that centralize information for operational efficiency.
By Matt Borkowski, Director of Business Applications Sales at Arctic IT