Egypt's City Stars streamlines business with Oracle E-Business Suite

The management behind the City Stars initiative, which includes a complex of three luxury hotels, shopping, offices, residences, and an exhibition center, have adopted the Oracle infrastructure to centralize key data, close its accounts faster, and have a more comprehensive view of finances across the different developments.

Oracle E-Business Suite is a complete but modular set of business applications that enables organizations to efficiently manage customer interactions, deliver services, manufacture products, ship orders, collect payments, manage financial records and transaction, and more - all from a system built on a unified information architecture. Whether it is implemented one module at a time or as a complete suite, Oracle E-Business Suite helps organizations make more informed decisions and improve business operations - while reducing expenses.

City Stars will utilize the Oracle solution to automate the leasing and management processes for 150,000 square metres of shopping space, 70,000 metres of office facilities, and almost 300 residential units. In addition, more than 500 City Star employees will have a centralized payroll function and access to administrative human resources tasks online. By migrating financial, leasing, and human resources information to a central integrated platform and enabling real-time access to it, City Stars' management anticipates reduced costs and improved decision-making capabilities across the entire project.

"Tourism ranks among the vital foundations of the Egyptian economy, and City Stars Heliopolis is perhaps one of the most ambitious projects since the Pyramids themselves were constructed. A core component to delivering the City Stars initiative on time and within budget is sound financial control, and we believe that the Oracle E-Business Suite will give our organization greater insight into our finances and resources right across the different elements that make up the City Stars complex," commented Mr. Noor Khan, Financial Controller, City Stars.

"When selecting a technology partner for this leading-edge facility, Oracle was a natural choice based on the comprehensive nature and Arabic-enabled functionality of its solutions. The fact that other Middle East-based property developers are realizing success with the Oracle E-Business Suite was also a deciding factor. Ultimately, we chose to work with Oracle after forecasting the operational cost savings and automation benefits that City Stars is expected to receive by deploying the Oracle E-Business Suite," Khan added.

The Oracle Financials module will act as the accounting backbone for the Intercontinental, Le Meridien, and Holiday Inn hotel properties within the City Stars complex. The solution will integrate with the property management component of the Oracle E-Business Suite, which automates annual leases for shops and residences within the development. The complete nature of the Oracle E-Business Suite will enable City Stars to forecast more accurately the occupancy of its hotels, apartments, offices, and exhibition space in order to make more informed decisions and take advantage of new opportunities in the market.

In addition, City Stars is deploying Oracle Enterprise Asset Management as part of its fiscal strategy, to optimize the availability and utilization of its vast range of assets. The solution will enable City Stars to proactively and centrally manage available resources such as inventory, equipment, and skilled personnel and match them to asset maintenance demand. Given the traditionally high maintenance demands in the hotel, retail, commercial, and residential property sectors, City Star's asset management strategy is set to streamline its processes and reduce unplanned downtime dues to maintenance headaches, while increasing work safety compliance.

Oracle partner Oratech-Raya Holding is managing City Stars' enterprise resource planning implementation. With City Stars on schedule to complete construction by spring 2004, the first phase of the Oracle E-Business Suite deployment will be in place when City Stars is open for business. Additional phases of the Oracle project will include the implementation of internet procurement and customer relationship management solutions.

"As City Stars Heliopolis emerges as one of the region's largest tourism initiatives, the project's leaders have chosen a technology strategy that enables centralized, transparent financial and human resources management across the entire enterprise," said Atef Helmy, Managing Director of Oracle Egypt. "The degree of fiscal control and accuracy that the Oracle E-Business Suite will enable, coupled with the benefits to the company's projected 2000 employees within the next two years, make this a winning initiative and one that is likely to be emulated by other real estate developers around the Middle East."

City Stars joins a list of state-of-art organizations who is running oracle property management like the Dubai based Emaar group, the Palm Island and the Kuwait Seef mall.