An ‘S’ learning curve is how Yap Chee Yuen, Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) Singapore senior VP and head of Innovation & Technology and Operations Services, describes his experience at the integrated resort to date.

He is well prepared for the task on hand as managing big IT projects is his forte. During his 28-year career, Yuen has handled at least eight large-scale IT start up projects or IT infrastructure rebuilding exercises.

“[But] with RWS, we were building from ground zero,” he stresses.

Driving Yuen’s motivation for success is his belief in the organization’s vision: One card, one customer, one resort. “Whether you are an employee or customer, we want you to have only one card for accessing services and transacting with the systems,” he explains.

RFID

Built in less than three years, Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) is one of the world’s most extensive and expensive integrated resorts. It has four hotels, a shopping and dining strip, FestiveWalk, Singapore’s first casino; the Convention Centre, which includes its Compass Ballroom, 26 function rooms and 1,600-seat Festive Grand theatre, and Universal Studios Singapore. Supporting the attractions are a 3,500-lot car park facility, restaurants, retail stores, entertainment and public attractions. In addition, the resort will open a marine life park, a destination spa and two remaining hotels with a total of 500 rooms in phase two of the development.

One IT feature Yuen is proud of is the RFID-enabled staff card. It allows the team to access its premises and also to clock in their working hours.

RWS is the first hotel in Singapore to have RFID in the uniforms of its 9,000 staff. To automate the process, after the uniforms are sent to the laundry, the system places them in the respective racks for employees’ pick-up.

Casino chips are RFID-tagged for inventory and fraud prevention purposes too, as RFID technology has been a proven solution for fast moving materials, says Yuen.

In line with the resort’s vision, when customers move from the casino to the theme parks and then to the F&B outlets, one card allows them to enjoy the earning and redemption of privileges across all the facilities.

WiFi

RWS has also deployed WiFi technology to allow the team to work as they move around the different areas of the resort.

Supporting these possibilities is the IT backend. RWS, says Yuen, is made up of one integrated campus network based on Internet Protocol. There is convergence of IT technology in many devices.

“It goes into consumer electronics, including IP TV in hotel rooms, IP phones and IP digital signage. The cables that carry voice will also carry data,” he says.

In addition, RWS has taken the opportunity to build its data center with a focus on green technology. That, Yuen believes, is possible because RWS is building the IT infrastructure from scratch. “This is an opportunity for us to do things that could not have been done if we were just rebuilding the IT infrastructure,” he comments.

Data center space limitation was one motivator to test out technologies including virtualization.

“Most of the space here is for revenue generating activities. So the IT team needed to be innovative. For example, our server rack heights are 20% higher than traditional ones,” says Yuen.

With virtualization, there are fewer physical servers, which require less floor space, less cooling, energy and carbon emission. Several racks are also wall-mounted to save space.

Now, with the first stage of the implementation completed and the transaction systems built, Yuen is currently exploring ways to leverage business intelligence technology to improve its understanding of the business opportunities and its customers better.

Multiple applications

Yuen started planning for RWS’ IT backbone in early 2007. The IT implementations were executed simultaneously with the construction of the resort.

Coordinating the activities while construction was ongoing was tricky, he recalls. And it meant in a multi-vendor environment, choosing the right partner was all the more crucial. Careful planning was critical too, says Yuen.

“Who should come first? Some issues we had to consider included cabling, networking, UPS, switches and servers. We had to understand the risk of each decision we made,” he says.

In addition, with multiple business lines, RWS needed applications for a wide range of functions including Retail, Hotel Rooms, Food & Beverage, as well as Casino and Asset Maintenance.

“Food and beverage outlets, ticketing, recipes for the kitchen, retail outlets – all needed specialized applications. We also needed applications for conference centre booking and the casino floor,” says Yuen.

With seamless integration of all the applications the challenge, RWS has placed its bets on Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise modules for Human Capital Management (HCM), Financial Management and Supplier Relationship Management.

ERP

One of the key areas close to his heart is how Yuen describes the RWS Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, which controls the enterprise’s material, finance and people flows.

“The information from over 15 systems flows into our Peoplesoft solution which, in turn, handles accounts payable and receivable,” he says.

With these applications, RWS manages its administration for the entire IR, including the recent recruitment of over 10,000 personnel over a short period of time, management of suppliers as well as transaction records.

On top of facilitating RWS’ management and support of numerous business lines, PeopleSoft also helps RWS adhere to a standard accounting structure across all business lines and comply with corporate financial reporting guidelines.

Originally published by our sister publication Enterprise Innovation 

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