Automated supply process from start to finish: the case of RIU in the Dominican Republic

6 hotels
in the DR

130
suppliers

DR’s digital
agenda

The starting point

RIU hotels in the Dominican Republic handled the sending of orders automatically and the reception of invoices and all associated transactions (bill of lading, credit receipts, debit receipts, claim receipts, etc.) automatically. Each month, the administration would receive an invoice with all the delivery notes of nearly all its suppliers.

In 2019, the team decided to make a change and began using an invoice for each delivery note, in order to adapt to the standard practice in the industry and the current regulation of the country. With this change, RIU predicted the transactions at their hotels in the Dominican Republic would multiply by 3 and therefore, the hotel chain decided it was the right time to digitize the entire process, as it had already done at their hotels in Spain.

This investment in digitization coincided with the mandatory stamping of electronic invoices by the government of the Dominican Republic.

RIU predicted the transactions at their hotels would multiply by 3.

Voxel is our main corporate electronic invoice supplier but for the Dominican Republic project we highly value their more than 9 years of experience digitizing specific processes in the country.

JAVIER DE LOS SANTOS
Administrative Development Corporate Director at RIU.

The solution

RIU opted for digitizing all transactions from start to finish: order, receipt of goods, claim receipt, credit receipt, debit receipt, receipt of payment and finally, reconciling of all electronic documents. RIU has accomplished all of this using Bavel Billing. “Voxel is our main corporate electronic invoice supplier but for the Dominican Republic project we highly value their more than 9 years of experience digitizing specific processes in the country”, said Javier De Los Santos, Administrative Development Corporate Director at RIU.

To make this possible, on the one hand, Bavel has integrated its system with RIU’s ERP and on the other hand, with all the hotel chain’s suppliers, adapting to the reality and operation of each of these companies.

The digitizing of all these transactions is being carried out progressively and at all Dominican Republic hotels.

RIU is the first hotel chain in the country to invest in digitizing their administrative area from start to finish, aligning itself with the country’s digital agenda driven by the DGII. On their part, the suppliers that have been added to the project have taken steps towards automating their internal processes and have planted the seed for creating a supplier ecosystem as well as encourage the digitization of other hotel chains in the country.

The outcome

RIU has already began the digitization project at all their hotels in the Dominican Republic. Even though transactions have increased, the hotel chain has been able to keep its management team down to two people. Also, claim receipts are automatically generated, which facilitates the managing of discrepancies. “The manual work we carry out every day has been drastically reduced and thanks to the digitization process, we can now dedicate our time to carrying out tasks with a greater added value”, explains Fernando Ferrera, Head of RIU’s Dominican Administration.

Currently, RIU electronically receives transactions from 7 suppliers. In 2022, RIU expects to add 6 additional suppliers, which would amount to 60% of transactions (order, credit/debit receipts and invoice) and more than 50% of the purchases.

RIU will also become an electronic taxpayer to the DGII. The government of the Dominican Republic will implement the mandatory electronic invoice for large taxpayers beginning in 2023.

“Beyond complying with the laws of the country, the aim of this project is to digitize. For us, digitizing means eliminating all manual tasks and achieving a 100% automatic process”, says De Los Santos.