Cornell University Adopts Adaco .NET at Renowned Statler Hotel

School of Hotel Administration modernizes inventory, procurement processes

NORWALK, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Since its inception in 1922, the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University has been recognized worldwide as the preeminent educational institution for hospitality management. It is no surprise, then, that the school has launched Adaco .NET as part of its operation of The Statler Hotel and the School of Hotel Administration.

“We wanted the efficiencies a new system would bring, but it was a matter of first upgrading the school’s financial system, hiring a Purchasing and Receiving Manager and scheduling the appropriate opportunity.”

Minutes from downtown Ithaca, NY, The Statler Hotel hires and trains students in a range of front-line positions as well as back-of-house support. Though providing a world-class business education in hospitality management is the school’s primary mission, the school also oversees the operation of a 153-room AAA Four Diamond hotel servicing the entire Cornell campus. This includes running a fine-dining restaurant, a bar, two specialty food outlets and a full-service banquet and catering operation. The school needed a system to precisely track requisitions for all classes, food laboratories and a student-run restaurant.

“We have been planning this upgrade for two years,” said the school’s Business Service Center Director and Hotel Controller Tracy Cary. “We wanted the efficiencies a new system would bring, but it was a matter of first upgrading the school’s financial system, hiring a Purchasing and Receiving Manager and scheduling the appropriate opportunity.”

The school took Adaco .NET live last June and appreciates all the benefits, from the ability to use bar codes for inventory to improved reporting capabilities. “We like it, the users are very happy, and we found huge efficiencies that resulted from keeping our inventory records in sync,” Tracy said.

It came under the responsibility of the new Purchasing and Receiving Manager to not only administer the Adaco .NET platform but research the school’s purchasing history with an eye toward reducing overall orders. Travis Virgadamo, with the school since March, successfully reduced 4,500 spreadsheet items (some representing multiple SKUs) to about 1,400 primary items.

“The advanced data conversion option allowed us to review the database for accuracy, inactivate products and vendors that were no longer used, adopt consistent administrative and naming schemes, and true-up our costs,” Virgadamo said. “Using bar code technology cut inventory time by 60 percent the first time it was tested,” Virgadamo said, while the combination of accurate costs, an updated database with a proper naming scheme, and Adaco’s sort feature has saved Receiving about two hours a day.

Personnel were pleased to streamline food and beverage procurement and reflect accurate costs but also embraced an opportunity to standardize recipes with Adaco’s robust and flexible recipe module. The outdated recipe data that existed in the previous system was wiped out in favor of updating and re-creating them anew, eliminating errors and aligning ingredients with active items in the database.

Virgadamo, a 2006 graduate of the school, has more plans in mind, eventually integrating goods and services from other departments into Adaco .NET. “We're pleased to have a new system that can centralize our requisitioning, facilitate best practices and also provide state-of-the-art instruction,” Virgadamo said.

“The Statler Hotel is not only a first-class accommodation, but a center of training for the next generation of hospitality managers,” said Eddie Mcdonough, Vice President of Sales for Adaco. “Cornell University is committed to providing their graduates with the skills that will be most in demand, and Adaco is proud to be a part of that effort.”