Situation
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is the location for the
largest, single-day sporting event in the world. Races at the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway include not only the Indianapolis
500, but also such premier races as the U.S. Grand Prix and the Allstate 400 at
the Brickyard. Hulman & Company is the parent company that owns the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway, along with several other businesses in various
fields.
Within the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, there are also
multiple businesses, including retail operations, food and beverage operations,
ticketing, contract management, and sponsorships. For each of these operations,
Speedway
employees need to track and report the financial information in the most
streamlined, accurate manner possible.
Additionally, the Speedway
has always had a strong focus on customer service and wants
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“All our lines of business use Microsoft Great Plains
in some way—whether employees are creating purchases or downloading data
to the General Ledger.”
Adrian Young, Director of Information Services,
the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
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to ensure they have an overarching view into customer activity
across all the business units.
Until about two years ago, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
had been using multiple, separate accounting systems and infrastructures that
were internally made for specific business units. Recognizing it needed a
solution that would help consolidate financial systems, the Speedway began considering SAP and Microsoft® Business Solutions–Great Plains®, now part of Microsoft Dynamics™.
Because its financial reporting and accounting functions were
not consolidated, the Speedway
ended up with each line of business having its own system and database, as well
as its own set of procedures and types of reporting. The listing of customer information
was also not consolidated, each having separate customer entries for every line
of business and storing on separate databases.
The Speedway
wanted one financial report with one database and one view of the customers
across all lines of business. “We needed to find out how we could get a more
consolidated financial report,” says Adrian Young, Director of Information
Services at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “At one point, we had ten lines of
business within one company—with ten databases and ten sets of procedures and
reporting.”
Solution
To consolidate financial data and reporting, the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway implemented Microsoft Great Plains in February 2005. The
implementation was enhanced by Deluxe Support from Microsoft Business Solutions
(now Microsoft Dynamics). “Deluxe Support helped us resolve issues quickly, and
they were available for us when we needed them” says Chuck Ferguson, Senior
Director of Information Services and Telecommunications, the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway.
The Speedway
knew Microsoft Great Plains would be less expensive and easier to use and
maintain than SAP, and it took those factors into account when it made its
choice. The Speedway
now has at its disposal a number of modules, including Report Writer, Payables
Management, Receivables Management, Purchase Order Processing, Sales Order
Processing, Inventory, and Fixed Assets Management.
Consolidated Accounting and Reporting with Microsoft
Great Plains
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway uses Microsoft Great Plains to
consolidate financial and accounting processes for many of its businesses, as
well as Microsoft Business Solutions for Analytics–FRx® to develop customized reports for the executives. With this
software, employees have extended reporting capabilities in addition to the
Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet software
capabilities they already have.
From start of day until end of day, all of the Speedway’s lines of
business are now being seamlessly processed with the help of modules within
Microsoft Great Plains:
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For ticketing sales: an internal application populates
the General Ledger, which in turn generates purchase records.
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For retail cash register sales: Sales Order
Processing enables a once-a-day process in which transactions are downloaded,
sales documents can be created, cash is applied, and receipts are processed.
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For the mail order side of the business: Sales
Order Processing records all fulfillment and shipping order transactions.
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For concessions and catering purchasing:
Inventory Control tracks food and beverages.
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For catering services: Sales Order Processing,
Inventory, General Ledger, and Accounts Receivable manage transactions, from
call center to food and beverage order fulfillment.
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For the on-site motel: Integration Manager for
downloading data from separate systems into General Ledger.
“All our lines of business use Microsoft Great Plains in some
way—whether employees are creating purchases or downloading data to the General
Ledger. A lot of the systems we develop are also built around Microsoft Great
Plains. Now we have one place to store multiple pieces of information,” says
Young.
Microsoft Great Plains Complements Other Microsoft
Technologies
The key to a totally integrated and successful solution is
utilizing complementary technologies. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway also uses
other Microsoft products and technologies—all of which have been designed to
work together.
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"SAP was a large, complicated system, offering
more features and functionality than we needed, which would have driven
up our licensing and implementation costs.”
Chuck Ferguson, Senior Director of Information
Services and Telecommunications, the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway
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Sales people at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway now use
Microsoft CRM for contract management to develop quotes, leads, and sales
orders. “We use Microsoft CRM as a fulfillment database for our Client Services
group,” says Young. “If visitors in a suite want certain food or music, a
contract is drawn up and put into Microsoft CRM, and it’s automatically sent to
the Client Services group so they can make sure to fulfill the contract by
having the suite and tickets available.”
Both Microsoft Office SharePoint®
Portal Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 are part of the Speedway’s solution, as well. SQL Server is
the primary database, so the Speedway
stores data from ticketing, inventory, and payroll all in one server.
Employees use SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to connect all
the different parts of business in its organization. For example, the legal
department uses SharePoint services to collect and store Certificates of
Insurance for vendors and different groups that are renting space or suites.
Young says, “Now, each department has its own portal to share and process
information.”
Benefits
The Microsoft Great Plains solution allows the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway employees to streamline their accounting and reporting processes
for better efficiency and accountability. With Microsoft CRM, the Speedway is better able
to service its customers across all business units with a high-level overview.
Hulman & Company, the Speedway’s
parent company, chose Microsoft over SAP based on business needs as well as cost
of ownership.
Faster Reporting
Streamlining accounting and reporting processes with one
system across all lines of business has reduced effort required to prepare
reports, leading to productivity increases among the accounting staff.
“Reporting that used to take us days can now be done in hours with Microsoft
Great Plains,” says Young.
Stronger Accountability
Accountability is also improved with the Microsoft Great
Plains solution. “Employees now can provide customized, easy-to-use reports
that give upper management a better view of financial data so that they can
make more informed and confident decisions,” adds Young.
Increased Customer Service Insight
By using Microsoft CRM, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway now
has one place for customer information, and this integration has helped enable
customer service employees to respond more quickly to customer requests, as
well as provided a higher-level overview of customer data. “By enabling us to
see all the customer information, we expect we will be able to be more
proactive in meeting customers’ needs,” says Young.
Reduced IT Costs and Complexities
By deploying one business management system, Microsoft Great
Plains, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has been able to cut costs and
complexities associated with IT and speed development and deployment of
software and services. Young adds, “We’re a 99.9 percent Microsoft shop now,
and this helps us use our IT resources more effectively with less downtime and
speedier deployment of new systems.”
More Cost-Effective
Solution for Parent Company
Standardization
on Microsoft Great Plains also extends to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s parent
company, Hulman & Company. Hulman & Company chose Microsoft Great
Plains 7.0 over an SAP system, based on cost of ownership and the ability of Great Plains to meet the unique needs of the
organization. Compared to the Microsoft Great Plains solution, SAP would have
required a much larger initial investment for operations and maintenance, and
the continuous availability of dedicated IT staffers. Additionally, for the
company’s people, Microsoft Great Plains, with its familiar, comfortable user
interface is much easier to learn and work with than SAP would have been.
"SAP was a large, complicated system, offering more
features and functionality than we needed, which would have driven up our
licensing and implementation costs. We thought our interests were better served
building on Microsoft Great Plains,” says Ferguson.
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© 2006
Microsoft Corporation. This case study is for informational purposes
only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document
published November 2006
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For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and
services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In
Canada,
call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers
who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United
States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada.
Outside the 50 United States
and Canada,
please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using
the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway products and services, call (800) 822-4639 or visit the Web site
at: www.brickyard.com
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Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable
business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business
decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar
Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning
curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on
what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with
the systems that your company already has implemented. By automating and
streamlining financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft
Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the
productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business
success.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to:
www.microsoft.com/dynamics
