University of New England

Norma projecting another banner year, UNE made a commitment to improve its conference services by purchasing Kinetic’s enterprise resource planning system, Kx Conferencing.

Within the first few months after implementing the comprehensive Kx system, her team noticed some dramatic changes that affected not only the bottom line in revenue but to overall increased department efficiencies. One vivid example was in the area of internal vendor billing, which often involves hundreds of internal and external charges. For the past two years, the dining department was charging ad hoc hourly fees for bartenders who were working at their events as well as fees for additional charges incurred if catering items were transported to non-dining location(s). The “check box” function of the Kx system was also instrumental in uncovering other departmental internal fees that were charged for items such as lifeguards and campus center managers before her department sent out final billing to her clients and she was able to recoup these “lost” charges instead of taking a loss. Before Kx was implemented, she took an analysis of the last fiscal year’s budget and discovered that some of the fees that internal departments were charging Conference Services directly tallied up to thousands of dollars annually.

“It could’ve been up to $10,000,” Norma reported, reflecting upon the annual amount of fees her department was paying to other departments within the university that weren’t being recouped from clients Conference Services had already billed their clients . “An amount in the range of $6,000 to $8,000 would be a conservative number.”

These were all honest errors – communication breakdowns – that Kx eliminates as the key players (conference services and dining) are now plugged into the same software system. Now that UNE’s dining staff and Conference Services staff is both using the system, these fees and charges are seen by all thus no surprise charges are incurred as a result. When, and if, dining raises the price of a meal package, the change is flagged for Conference Services immediately in real time and everyone is aware of the new pricing or charge backs immediately. An “audit trail” enables Norma and her staff to go into the system and see who is making the changes. “This system has allowed us to be almost perfect.”

Finding previously lost charges isn’t the only way that Kx is generating a return on UNE’s investment. Through the software system’s ability to pull all activity together quickly, the Conference Services staff has reduced the time needed to invoice a client to 2-3 days, compared to 21 days post-event that were needed when the staff did the process manually. In 2008 UNE invoiced and collected 98 percent of its revenue from summer groups by October 2008, freeing up the three-person staff to begin marketing and sales efforts two months earlier than in prior years.

Kx also helped to streamline and spot target their marketing efforts. The Residential Module captured committed or likely lodging for 2009 at 60 percent of capacity. Graphics immediately revealed that the underutilized overnight space was in the traditional residence halls thus making it apparent that focusing her marketing efforts to youth student groups – the best prospects for such lodging –was the path to follow. With this information readily at hand, UNE’s staff marketed and connected with a local youth hockey program that was looking for a venue to call home that could house from 300 to 500 students. “With Kx, we were able to market a lot sooner than January,” Norma remarked. “We were able to get to these target groups before they committed elsewhere at other venues.” She added,

“The purchase and use of Kx has made a valuable difference in the way we do our business and has already proven to all that our ROI was well worth it and it still continues to serve as a valuable tool in communicating with our internal vendors.”