Englewood, Colo.-based hotel development and management company Stonebridge Companies announced Friday that it plans to use a special integration technology called Duet that will link its SAP ERP 2005 back-end suite with Microsoft desktop applications. Duet is a between SAP's powerful business applications and Microsoft's Office software that allows users not versed in SAP's intricacies to easily synchronize tasks directly through Microsoft Outlook calendar software or other Office apps.

Stonebridge intends to use SAP ERP to help automate several of its financial, human resources, compliance reporting and real estate management processes. The move is designed to help Stonebridge, which develops properties over the western U.S., to double in size over the next several years, the company said in a statement.

"We turned to SAP over other vendors because they gave us a clear, simple path to digitize our business and place information in the hands of employees across the company," said Navin Dimond, president and CEO of Stonebridge Companies. "In the hospitality industry, fiscal oversight and accountability to our investors is critical, which means we must be able to accurately predict how well our properties will perform. SAP will enable us to improve our service to shareholders, consumers and business partners."

Currently, Stonebridge is encumbered by slow paper and manual data entry-based processes. The company plans to end those processes, along with its existing Solomon ERP software -- now a part of Microsoft Dynamics -- in favor of SAP, said Nasim Mansurov, director of IT at Stonebridge. In an interview, he said Stonebridge signed the multimillion-dollar deal in December, and plans to start the rollout this month. It hopes to wrap the project in about nine months, he said.

Key to the implementation will be the use of Duet software, he said. Many of Stonebridge's employees, especially those in the corporate office, use Outlook. With Duet, employees need only be familiar with the Outlook interface to access SAP ERP data, which will reduce training costs and boost user productivity. For instance, users can click on a special icon on their desktop and open a new window to get direct access to HR-related information, such as what their year-to-date earnings are. Only specialists expected to work with SAP closely will require training.