MGM / Mirage Resorts, Inc.
More than 30 million visitors venture to Las Vegas each year to dance with
Lady Luck. To accommodate the daily influx of tourists from around
the world, the desert resort community has sprouted new hotels, office
parks, strip malls and residential housing. Massive construction projects
and expansive growth in the city that never sleeps has been a wake-up call
for hiring directors and job placement agencies. On average, more than
1,000 individuals relocate to Las Vegas each month. Many look for
employment with the city's most lucrative job source – the hotel industry.
Human resources (HR) departments at these hotels are faced with the
daunting task of managing the thousands of pages of paperwork required to
process applications and manage employee files. On average hotels process
seven to 10 documents per employee each year ranging from the initial job
application to employee personal records and job evaluations.
Bellagio, an MGM MIRAGE property, has turned to electronic document and data
capture technology to manage the hiring boom. The hotel recently implemented
Kofax Ascent Capture to enable a completely paperless HR solution.
Eventually, Bellagio human resources management system will be duplicated at
the entire group of MGM MIRAGE properties nationwide.
The Problem
Upon opening in 1998, Bellagio was billed as one of the most luxurious and
exclusive hotels along the Las Vegas strip. Boasting more than 3,000 rooms,
10 restaurants and bars and an elaborate casino and art exhibit, the hotel
was faced with hiring 10,000 employees. Bellagio began implementing its
paperless HR solution by first processing all new employee applications
through electronic means. On-site PCs are used by prospective new hires to
complete the hotel's application. In addition, hotel HR staff and
administrators managed the sea of paperwork that followed transfer employees
from existing MGM MIRAGE properties. With several paper documents
accompanying each employee transfer, the hotel would have been processing
thousands of pieces of paper each week. Rather than build filing rooms and
dedicate new employees to the task, Bellagio HR management chose to
implement an electronic filing system combining the benefits of content
capture and management technology. In so doing, HR enabled hotel executives
to access employee files to add notes or reference employee information.
The Solution
With the help of Western Office Systems, Bellagio implemented an effective
solution to manage the ocean of paperwork for various HR applications. Soon
after Bellagio's successful implementation, Western Office Systems was asked
to install the same timesaving document management solution for the other
MGM MIRAGE properties including Mirage, Treasure Island and Golden Nugget in
Las Vegas, Golden Nugget in Laughlin, Nev. and Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Miss.
However, the other MGM MIRAGE properties were faced with the even greater
challenge of converting more than 25,000 existing paper-based employee
records into electronic documents. "Bellagio and MGM MIRAGE’s other
properties required an efficient solution to tackle the enormous task faced
by HR to manage employee files, relieving the burden of shuffling paperwork
in response to daily management requests for employee information," said Ray
Hughes, general manager of Western Office Systems. "Our firm worked closely
with the HR and IS departments to assess the company's needs and develop a
clear vision of what the system needed to do. We focused on keeping it
simple yet robust to streamline an otherwise complicated and time-consuming
file management process." The solution included FileNET's Panagon Content
Services paired with Kofax Ascent Capture software and Fujitsu scanners,
which featured Kofax Adrenaline boards to boost scanner speed and
performance. The combination of Kofax Ascent Capture and FileNET content
management software converts and stores paper documents in a central
database enabling customers to manage and secure business-critical
electronic documents and access them via a corporate intranet. With employee
files indexed at a single location, the document management solution saves
time and resources by allowing hotel management to access this information
directly from desktop computers.
Solutions Benefits
"We've been most impressed by the accuracy of documents and
their immediate availability once scanned into the system," said Marilyn
Mattick, Bellagio's director of compensation. "We’ve significantly reduced
the number of hours and the amount of staff that it would normally take to
manage paper-based files. We now have the ability to offer management
access to employee files 24/7 via the corporate intranet. Managers no longer
have to wait for HR to provide the files. They can go online to view
specific employee records and are able to make notes directly in the file.
This significantly cuts down on the time and effort it used to take
department managers and HR staff to accomplish the same tasks using
paper-based methods." According to Dominick Vacca, the project manager for
MGM MIRAGE, "an average of 4,000 company managers has access to the system."
To streamline data access, the company's IT department set up a thin-client
computing system. Thin-client computers, which assist businesses in
centralizing and consolidating information assets, are connected to the
central server which houses the employee information database, enabling
management to immediately retrieve employee files for their particular
hotel. "Management now has immediate access to information from their own
computers," Vacca said. "They no longer have to send requests to HR for
employee information and wait for the files to be sent to them. The new
system significantly reduces paperwork on both sides and cuts down on time
it normally takes HR management to process and fulfill these requests."
Based on the successful implementations at Bellagio and other MGM MIRAGE
hotels, the company's executive management has decided to extend the
document management solution at all MGM MIRAGE properties. The system will
link MGM MIRAGE hotels and resorts for both on-site employee processing as
well as intra-corporate employee transfers. In Nevada MGM MIRAGE to
properties to be deployed include New York-New York, the MGM Grand Hotel and
the Primm Valley Resorts. The MGM Grand Hotel in Detroit also will install
the document management system. To date, the system has processed more than
1.7 million documents and has saved the hotel chain more then $1.5 million
in employee and technology costs. With the help of document and content
management technology, it's a safe bet that HR management will be able to
handle the expansion without a hitch.
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MGM MIRAGE is an entertainment company headquartered in Las Vegas which owns
and/or operates through subsidiaries 18 casino properties on three
continents, employing more than 50,000 worldwide. Each property features a
wide range of renowned restaurants, world-class entertainment and shopping
options. Internationally, MGM MIRAGE owns and operates the MGM Grand Hotel
and Casino in Darwin, Australia and manages casinos in Nelspruit, Witbank
and Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa.
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