How Starboard Hotels Made AP Process 40% More Efficient
Starboard Hotels is a privately owned, independent hotel group operating a diverse portfolio of 21 hotels across the UK, and 2 central support offices. The group manages a broad mix of branded and independently operated hotels, working in partnership with leading global franchise brands such as IHG, Accor, Hilton, Best Western, and Wyndham. They are focused on delivering great accommodation for short-stay business and transient leisure travellers. Backed by a portfolio of respected brands and uncompromising standards, the group delivers a consistently exceptional stay for every guest. Complementing this portfolio are three independently owned and operated hotels located in coastal Devon the Lake District, and London, offering a more experiential guest stay.
As the business continued to grow and diversify, the volume and complexity of invoices, purchase orders, and the approval process increased across the various brands, systems, and locations. Managing AP through siloed processes increased pressure on the finance function, limiting visibility into approvals and spend. To address these challenges and strengthen financial control across the group, they implemented Lightyear’s AP automation solution, which supports a multi-entity hospitality environment.
Challenges of a Decentralised Procurement Process
Simon Gardner, Procurement Manager at Starboard Hotels, explained that, before he joined the business, Starboard Hotels had not established a centralised procurement function, and purchasing was largely driven by operational teams.
“Before we established a centralised procurement function, our operations teams largely handled the day-to-day, from identifying the need, setting standards, sourcing suppliers, to managing products and pricing. It was all managed operationally, which created challenges in maintaining consistency, control and central oversight.”
He further highlighted that in a limited service hotel, one person could be responsible for the entire procurement process. This overlap of responsibilities created dependency, increased operational risk, and limited visibility and control over spend.
“In a typical limited-service hotel, the General Manager could be responsible for the entire process. This includes identifying the need for supplies, raising and approving POs, sending them to the supplier, receiving the goods, receipting and approving the invoice in line with defined approval limits. From start to finish, it could all sit with one person, which created a heavy dependency on individuals.”
Starboard Hotels needed a solution to streamline approvals and implement a proper purchase order system. After evaluating several options, they chose Lightyear as their AP automation solution.
“Lightyear was initially introduced to meet finance requirements, helping to generate purchase orders with proper controls, receive and process invoices through the approvals workflow, and then push them through to Xero.”
In a business, when every step is handled by a single person, it creates a heavy reliance on them.
Checking In to Automation & Control
“Lightyear has brought significant efficiency gains, making it much easier to raise purchase orders, with relevant approvals, and send them through to suppliers.”
Additionally, Simon highlighted that Lightyear provides Starboard Hotels with greater control and visibility over spend.
“Being able to limit orders to predefined items and control pricing ensures pre-agreed rates are maintained. Lightyear also makes it easy to verify that invoice prices match POs. It brings control across the entire purchasing process.”
Moreover, Simon emphasised that the team depends on Lightyear’s system controls to enforce the correct approval workflows based on supplier, spend value and department.
“We rely heavily on system controls to ensure that, depending on the supplier, spend value, or GL categorisation, approvals go through the right levels at the purchase order stage, before it even reaches invoicing and payment. With Lightyear, we have now started to segregate responsibilities and implement system-driven controls, such as approvals based on value and suppliers.”
With Lightyear, purchase order approvals are routed to the appropriate levels.
40% More Efficient Accounts Payable Process
“It’s a huge time saver. In terms of efficiencies, I would estimate that Lightyear delivers at least 40% improvement.”
Simon knows there are still more areas of Lightyear to explore that would save his team even more time every month.
“There are operational processes that could be far more efficient, and we’re now working to identify the gaps and see how the system can better perform and deliver for us.”
Simon explained that Lightyear’s customer support has been a standout.
“The support has been great, and having a dedicated Account Manager has made everything much more fluid.”
When asked what advice Simon would give to other businesses looking at Lightyear as their AP automation solution, he said:
“My advice would be to be very clear up front about what you expect from the system and to do a full gap analysis. Procure-to-pay is an end-to-end process that overlaps procurement and finance. and it can’t be managed in isolation. Make sure both teams define the scope clearly and understand what your AP automation system and any other solutions can and can’t deliver.”
See how Lightyear can help your hospitality business scale with success.