Payment Management Case Studies - Hospitality / Gaming

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Station Casino Hits Jackpot ACOM’s MICR Laser Check Disbursement Solution

THE BACKGROUND
As the new MIS director at Station Casino, St. Charles, a hospitality and gaming facility located alongside the Missouri River at St. Charles, Missouri, John Enriquez was more quizzical than disenchanted with the procedure for issuing checks. Payables and payroll were processed on an IBM AS/400, with checks produced on a line printer using preprinted check stock. After running through a burster with a signature plate, checks were collated, stuffed into envelopes, and run through a sealer, after which they were distributed in the facility’s uniform room.

As Enriquez observed five staff members spending a full day every two weeks stuffing paychecks and stubs into envelopes for 1,400 employees, he mused that in the technological climate of the 1990’s, there ought to be a better way.

When he found one and presented it to management, they were all attention, quickly recognizing that the solution -- a hardware-software MICR-laser check disbursement system from ACOM--would fit neatly into a master project for upgrading and standardizing financial and operations management systems then being implemented companywide by corporate information systems project manager Vicki
Fisher.

Station Casino St. Charles is one of six hospitality and gambling facilities operated by Station Casinos, Las Vegas, where four of the facilities are located. The sixth, opened in January 1997, is a three-quarter million square-foot complex located in Kansas City, Missouri.

The company originated in 1976 as The Casino, a 5,000 square foot facility with 100 slot machines and four Black Jack tables. The establishment tripled in size the following year with the addition of a bingo parlor, more gaming space, new dining facilities and a new name: The Bingo Palace. A year later it again tripled in size. By 1983, it was a full-scale casino, and management renamed it the Palace Station Casino, selecting a Victorian railroad theme for decor.

Not far off the Strip at Sahara Boulevard and Interstate Highway 15, Palace Station now boasts a 1,028-room hotel and nearly 100,000 square feet of public space, including an 84,000 square foot casino with 2,110 slot machines, 56 table games and a variety of other activities. The other Las Vegas-area operations are Boulder Station, opened in 1994 on the city’s east side; Texas Station, opened in 1995 in North Las Vegas; and Sunset Station Hotel & Casino, opened in mid-1997 in the Henderson/Green Valley area to the south of the city. Boulder Station is a 40-acre facility with an 83,000 square-foot casino and 15-story hotel; Texas Station offers 198,000 square feet of public space including a 200-room hotel, 68,000 square foot casino and a 10,000 square foot bingo parlor; Sunset Station is comprised of 350,000 square feet of public space including an 80,000 square-foot casino and 20-story, 450-room hotel.

All of the casinos employ IBM AS/400 computers as their mainframes and, under the direction of project manager Fisher, all have standardized on the J.D. Edwards financial management software suite.

When Enriquez voiced concern over the wasted time and resources involved in conventional check disbursement to his forms supplier, the Jerome Group, sales representative Steve Volker suggested using InfoSeal, a self-folding, self sealing form that allowed the complete check to be produced in a single pass through a printer and sealing machine – logo/graphics, MICR line, check number, payee, amounts, signature and all. Enriquez undertook a comparative study and found that not only would he be able to save nearly 40 hours in labor costs each pay period with a MICR-laser solution, but also that the forms and material costs would be a bit lower.

THE SOLUTION
What was needed was a software system that would build a bridge between the data residing on the AS/400 computer and the final printed, folded, signed and sealed checks. The Jerome Group rep mentioned several sources, among them ACOM.

Particularly appealing was ACOM’s positioning as a single source provider. ACOM supplies MICR-enhanced laser printers as well as the QuickCheckTM and QuickFormTM check processing and design software, stuffer-sealer postprocessing equipment, paper and consumables.

While alleviating check fraud, QuickCheck also reduces check disbursement costs by eliminating pre-print and inventory of check stock; by eliminating the need for bursters, collators and signature stamps; and by reducing personnel requirements for check runs. QuickCheck also offers advanced security features, among them Positive Pay; Reverse Image Font; Signature Control; Front Panel Override, which forces the printer to print only a single page; and Security Reporting, which enables the production of detailed ad hoc audit reports. QuickForm is an easy-to-use forms creation module that functions as a MICR-enabled front-end design tool. It is available for both the AS/400 and the Wintel environments.

“We had pretty well settled on generating accounts payable and payroll checks by MICR laser printer, but I was also interested in the potential to produce other forms, such as W-2s, 1099s, statements and invoices,” Enriquez says.“ACOM software not only had many modules available in QuickCheck/400 software, but it also offered the capability for us to design our own forms if we wished to.”

THE IMPLEMENTATION
Because the St. Charles casino was then running a different financial management system and the company wanted to coordinate the implementation of the new check disbursement solution with implementation of the new J.D. Edwards financial management software, corporate management decided that the proper place for the pilot installation of an ACOM system would be the new Kansas City facility.

Fisher and Enriquez worked with ACOM and Edwards representatives, first, to implement QuickCheck for payroll, which then was produced by ADP; subsequently bringing in accounts payable as well. The solution was inaugurated in December, 1996, one month prior to the facility’s public debut.

“ACOM software is easy to use, but Station Casinos’ development group made it even easier by creating a program that links the Edwards and ACOM software and makes the check writing process transparent to the users,” Fisher says. “It is unnecessary to go into QuickCheck to print checks. The operator simply chooses ‘Print Checks’ in J.D. Edwards and the spool file data is passed to the ACOM system for check creation.”

With Kansas City fully operational, Fisher turned her attention to completing her broader project -- implementing J.D. Edwards, ACOM and Kronos at the other facilities. The financial and management information requirements for the four Las Vegas properties have now been consolidated and centralized, with a single AS/400 computer serving the payroll and financial functions of the four operating units. A second AS/400 houses all lodging and gaming functions for the four Las Vegas properties as well as for the corporate offices. Each of the two computers serves as the other’s redundant system.

The company partially preprints its check forms with the Station Casinos logo, with each operating unit retaining its distinctive identity, or DBA, through the addition of an identifier line in the QuickCheck software which is printed on the checks as they are run.

“This affords the company great savings in paper costs because of the volume of checks we order,” Fisher says. “In Las Vegas, we use a single check form, but with different colors to differentiate between payroll and accounts payable. Direct deposit advice uses a different form.”

The opening of Sunset Station provided another use for the software, Fisher says: travel agent checks. Once the facility had implemented payroll and accounts payable checks using the ACOM MICR laser solution, there were no bursters or signers on the property, so it was a natural migration.

ACOM has three signature options available for its printers -- a removable cartridge placed in the printer, a SIMM chip installed in the printer, and a signature font stored on the AS/400. Station Casinos has used them all.

SUCCESS
“The ACOM solution saves many steps,” Fisher adds. “The former process was labor intensive and required a great deal more attention through the various production phases. Our users were very excited with the ACOM solution, particularly with having a transparent, one-pass process and not having to stuff envelopes any more. We also have achieved a high level of security because the check stock is blank. A combination of things are always required – signature, check stock, access to software -- to write and sign a check.”

The ACOM system has lived up to Enriquez’ expectations fully.

“Labor saving is the big thing for me,” he says. “But besides being more efficient, the laser printer solution is far more reliable than a line printer, and it produces a more attractive, better quality check.”

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