June 2002 - When Carlos Maldonado, the high-spirited scion of the Maldonado paper and pulp family of Mexico, takes on a challenge he keeps one thing in mind:  the welfare of both his employees and hotel guests.  Maldonado stepped up to become president of Milenium Hoteles in 1998 when it spun off from parent company Copamex Turismo, and was just in time to help the company survive a technological guillotine:  Milenium�s 11-hotel enterprise computer system would not recognize the year 2000. 

To ease the transition for guests and his 1,300 employees, and to lay the foundation for future growth, Maldonado searched for a system that would make more guest information available across all Milenium�s properties from a central location, could be utilized across many areas of the financial, inventory and retail accounting operations, was easy to use, and never went down.  SAP, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft all had great solutions, but the price tag for each was better suited to the Pentagon�s budget, not Milenium�s.  So Maldonado�s went to another industry giant for an answer; he called Microsoft.  Microsoft listened to Milenium�s requirements and recommended the Rapsodia^TM financial management system from Advansys LLC, a company that specializes in hospitality accounting solutions.  Milenium installed Rapsodia in June, 1999 after nearly a year of research.

�We agreed to terms with Advansys at the 1999 HITEC show in Atlanta, with the stipulation that they convert our entire corporate financial system to Rapsodia in time to meet our Y2K installation deadline,� explained Enrique Sanchez, Milenium�s Corporate Planning Director.  �They kept their commitment.  In two and a half months Advansys had income statements and balance sheets produced 100% from Rapsodia on a single centralized server supporting our 11 properties and 250 users in different locations.�  Of those properties, which include Holiday Inn®, Holiday Inn Express®, Crowne Plaza®, Staybridge Suites, Country Inn & Suites®, and Inter-Continental® hotels, three are full service properties and the remainder are limited service hotels targeting the executive business traveler.  All are in cities near financial or commercial centers.

Keeping guest service levels high was another key consideration in Maldonado�s choice of a back office enterprise system that not only has a strong set of financial management tools, but could also expand into CRM and business intelligence duty to provide comprehensive guest information.   Over the years Six Continents has recognized Milenium Group with many awards including Torchbearer Award, Best of the Best, Quality Excellence, Newcomer of the Year, and Priority Club Member's Choice. 

�We are also bringing in guest information from our OPERA front office systems to build guest profiles in Rapsodia�s SQL Server database to get a clear view of who our customers are,� Sanchez continued.  �We abstract data tables from the database, put them in readable form, and generate a number of graphic charts.  With business intelligence we track stay habits, how much guests spend on premises and in which profit centers they spend it, as well as what company they are coming from.� Sanchez noted Milenium also pays particular attention to its Six Continents Priority Club members.

Milenium�s back office solution ties together the entire Milenium chain with a standard balance sheet and chart of accounts for each company, all on a single server.   Sanchez concluded, �What helped us make the decision to standardize on Rapsodia was its Microsoft compatibility.  Anything we need for the office we can buy off the shelf.� 

The owner/operator�s expansion plans, which Maldonado characterizes as �strategic and cautious� include branching out this year into operating hotels for third party owners. 

About Milenum Hoteles
Founded in 1976 as a division of Copamex Turismo, a construction and tourism company privately owned by the Maldonado family, Milenium Hoteles was spun off in 1998 with Carlos Maldonado as its president.  Milenium has grown from just one Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza® in Monterrey, Mexico to a total of 20 companies, all supported by the Rapsodia financial suite of applications.  Milenium�s 11 hotels each communicate with the corporate server via a leased line connection.  Properties upload their data to headquarters, and each hotel logs on to the same server to see the same application and information.

About Advansys
Advansys LLC has been providing computerized financial solutions to the hospitality and other industries since 1984.  During that time the company has earned a reputation for state-of-the-art products, and developed relationships with Microsoft, Digital, and Deloitte Touche to create its leading edge Rapsodia application. Rapsodia is a customizable, Windows-based, integrated, back office solution with numerous modules, including time and attendance, payroll, inventory management, fixed assets, treasury, purchase orders, merchandise reception, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and general ledger.  With a proven track record in the hospitality vertical, Rapsodia allows executives to create business information reports, such as consolidated statements for groups of corporations, that analyze in-depth information actionable for tomorrow�s decisions.  Forty percent of the hotels and resorts in Mexico use solutions from Advansys for accounting and administrative management.