Caesars Entertainment is a gaming and hospitality industry giant with 70,000 employees over 51 properties across the United States and in seven countries. The enterprise works with Grant Thornton as it undertakes a strategic transformation to modernize its business-wide support functions. This seminar focuses on the operations of the organization and the ERP and HCM transformation.

Alex Gilmour, Director HCM Transformation at Caesars Entertainment, Michael Mann, VP of Finance Transformation at Caesars Entertainment, Bill Behen, Principal at Grant Thorton and Chris Tom, Director at Grant Thorton give practical examples from their experiences along Caesars Entertainment’s journey to the cloud. They describe how they set out on the journey after Caesars Entertainment leadership agreed that Oracle Cloud could be key to their growth strategy goals. Specifically, Oracle Cloud contributes to the growth strategies of investing in infrastructure to enhance long-term value and instituting a continuous improvement-focused operating model.

Gilmour and his panel of presenters point out that practices found in Oracle white papers – especially “Multiple Pillar Oracle Cloud Implementation Best Practices” guided much of their cloud journey.  Useful recommendations apply to the order of implementation, organizational readiness, shared-services model and alignment of HR and Finance. The presenters explore the alternatives for the order of implementation for which Oracle, they note, does not have a preference. Shared configurations between Oracle Cloud Financials and Oracle Cloud HCM result in a great number of shared foundation data (such as addresses, bank accounts, locations, etc.) which is listed in the presentation.

Caesars Entertainment shares the governance/org model for program implementation and delivery. From ERP, HCM and IT delivery teams, key staff members from finance, accounting and HR are integrated throughout the model. The Caesars team makes many recommendations for program implementation teams, but stresses cross-participation and education, a common methodology, testing and validation.

The presentation includes a description of Caesars’ implementation when ERP is established before HCM. They share strategies – such as communication and cross-participation, to avoid identified pitfalls. They present interesting ideas from their experiences, including one to follow ERP go-live for HCM with a final round of validations and a copy of production. They also recommend ERP in regression testing the new “shared” environment.

The enterprise and workforce structure are critical to the success of Oracle Cloud implementation and delivery. The Caesars team believes that having the team and a hierarchy in place and trained is necessary. They describe a recommended configuration and communication plan for the entire enterprise and workforce structure, from cost centers to divisions.