Terror Free Daily Reporting
Ripley’s Aquarium is the most visited attraction in South Carolina. Located on Myrtle Beach’s red hot Broadway at the Beach district, the attraction boasts a $40 million, state-of-the-art, 87,000 square foot aquarium. Once visitors have encountered the world’s most deadly and stunning aquatic life there’s no shortage of entertainment offerings. The facility boasts one of Ripley’s world famous Believe It Or Not museums, the Haunted Adventure tour and the hydraulic powered Moving Theatre. That’s a lot of entertainment in one place, and for the back office that’s a lot of numbers to crunch.
Ripleys sells tickets via Gateway Ticketing Systems‘ Galaxy Point of Sale, packaging combos that allow guests to visit multiple attractions over the course of their stay. It’s not enough to know where tickets were sold, but also where and when they were redeemed. Revenue is split and sorted into a daily revenue report that’s sent up to the corporate head office. With each new attraction and each new promotional initiative, that process becomes more complex and time consuming. Help was needed.
JMR’s innovative solution took some very complex technology and created a simple, time-saving process. By analyzing how accounting staff manually found their numbers, JMR’s software engineers were able to reproduce the daily data gathering process electronically. With the clever application of a tool used to analyze language, a simplified “business rules” calculator was created.
Ripley’s staff are now able to define their business rules in easily understandable statements. These statements are broken down by the language analyzer, which then calculates the attendance and revenue numbers needed and places the results on an Excel spreadsheet. Staff need not worry about complex or time consuming number gathering.
“This has saved us not only time, but our reports are much more accurate”
Senior staff accountant Carrie Spencer reported some startling results, “JMR was not only able to understand what we needed, but was able to set up an automatic retrieval process that cut our reporting time from 3-4 hours to within 15-20 minutes.” This process frees up Carrie and her staff time to analyze those numbers, checking for accuracy and completeness. Time spent compiling information is now spent understanding it. That’s smart.
The process was also easy for Ripley’s staff, as JMR’s consultants strived to bridge the gap between the often obscure IT concepts and real life business rules. With years of experience servicing the hospitality sector, JMR was able to understood the unique concerns and challenges presented.
With the benefits seen in Myrtle Beach, JMR technology has begun to roll out to other Ripley Entertainment properties. Daily reporting at Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies in Gatlinburg, Tennessee is now assisted by the JMR software.
