On a pristine coastline just south of Hurghada, Egypt, lies Soma Bay Resort, which opened its doors in 1998. With 11 kilometers of unspoiled coastline, it offers a getaway for those who love stunning shores and sports like swimming, golf and snorkeling. The development company started with five hotels, a spa and a variety of luxury vacation homes and has expanded incrementally since then. But there’s no doubt Soma Bay leadership has experienced many setbacks along the way.
Dark days for Soma Bay
The political turmoil surrounding the Egyptian Revolution, as well as weather concerns, damaged their resort and tourism industry; Soma Bay had to take charge and keep up with technology. They implemented JD Edwards EnterpriseOne enterprise resource planning software to help manage fixed expenses so they could effect a more solid future in an unstable environment. They continue to use JD Edwards tools to position themselves as a desirable resort community while maintaining tight control over their financial future.
“2016 was a difficult year for the Egyptian tourism industry and the economy in general,” according to Mohammed Serry, CFO at Soma Bay Company. When the resort’s occupancy dropped from 50% occupancy to 25%, they knew that something had to change to increase their business value again. Soma Bay management credits their success to integrating JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications that reside in the cloud, and they are the first Egyptian company to migrate JD Edwards software to Oracle Cloud IaaS.
“We can run any type of workload in the cloud, and we have the flexibility to add or subtract resources based on our company needs,” posits Sameh Karim, database administrator section head at Soma Bay. They implemented a lift and shift migration with Oracle IaaS migration tools to resume operations and boost sales at lightning speed.
Adding to the resort space
Investing in construction incentivized the company’s demand for increased financial savvy last year. In fact, they’re building over 500 seaside resort homes to create a dual income stream of both real estate and tourism. Decision makers all agreed they couldn’t have accomplished this without the help of monitored cash flow via JD Edwards tools: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Real Estate and JD Edwards Homebuilder Management. “Being able to track every penny we spend on a project has revolutionized our business,” said Cherif Safir, financial controller at Soma Bay Facility Management Company.
“We have found the right platform for the future.”
Soma Bay uses these applications to create advanced reporting for cash flow, accounts receivable aging reports, project management reports and key performance indicators. Serry says this about their strategy: “Oracle offered a complete solution that reveals the profitability drivers and growth drivers of the business. We now have fast, accurate and timely information about profitability and costs, along with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne One View reporting to present the information to management and ExCom … We have found the right platform for the future.”
For the full article and insights about how Oracle applications have helped improve Soma Bay’s daily operations, check out this piece from Profit Magazine. If you want to hear more exiting stories from users, join us at our Oracle COLLABORATE conference, COLLABORATE 18, April 22-26, 2018.