Worked by | Nguyen Thanh Loc - 18071152

SOMA ENTERPRISE INFFORMATION SYSTEM

BAY REPORT
Executive Summary
In this report, I will visit the website of Soma Bay and assess its business model.
Then I will give a general description of Soma Bay.com, outline its business
process, and examine the information systems to improve it. Finally, I could
conduct a web search and propose a number of innovative solutions (example: IoT,
AI, and machine learning) that I have acknowledged from the theoretical basis
studied in this Enterprise Information System subject and could implement in the
company to improve business efficiency.

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Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.....................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................3
PART 1: COMPANY BACKGROUND.......................................................................3
 Introduction of the company:....................................................................3
 Business model:..........................................................................................4
 Business result:...........................................................................................7
PART 2: ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS..................................7
 Business process description:.....................................................................7
 Analyze the information systems to improve the business process.............9
PART 3: PRACTICAL TASKS................................................................................12
CONCLUSION......................................................................................................14
REFERENCE LIST..............................................................................................15
CASE STUDY.........................................................................................................16

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 Introduction

Part 1: Company background

 Introduction of the company:

Soma Bay is a 10-million-square-mile resort community on the Egyptian shore of

the Red Sea, 45 km South of Hurghada International Airport. The self-contained
community of Soma Bay is located on a peninsula surrounded on all sides by the
sea. About 5 km in length and 2 km wide, the peninsula is accessed via a 7 km
private road through a single controlled entry gate. It has many attractions that
make it a first-class vacation paradise, including five hotels, a championship golf
course, water sports facilities, a world-class spa, and luxury vacation homes, etc.
Soma Bay Development Company is headquartered in Hurghada, Egypt and has
over 2,000 employees (9).

 Business model: 

Hotels & Service: Full-service hotels cater to business, leisure travel and other
locations. Leisure activities at Soma Bay include Red Sea diving at its reef and
other nearby diving sites. The five resorts (Kempinski, Sheraton, Robinson Club,
The Cascades and The Breakers Diving & Surfing Lodge) also have access to an
18-hole, par 72 championship golf course and golf academy designed by Gary
Player (8).

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 Source: somabay.com

Spa & Thalasso: Soma Bay also has one of the largest spas and thalassotherapy
centres in the region, including 65 treatment rooms and facilities extending over
7,500 square meters offering a wide range of first-class treatments and services.
Moreover, water sports are popular due to the prevailing winds which allow for
windsurfing, kitesurfing and sailing (8).

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 Source: somabay.com

Real estate & Mansion: Soma Bay also has a significant portfolio of residential
properties, Somabay’s one-of-a-kind settings with its full complement of premium
amenities are the stage for incomparable experiences alongside friends and family.
This has become gradually popular with Egyptian and foreign tourists and
prominently divided into a number of areas including Soma Breeze, Mesca, Reef
Town, Wadi Jebal, Bay West, and Bay Central, which is connected to Somabay
App - the new official communication platform and home management tool for
Soma Bay property owners in order to facilitate and enhance the community
experience (8).

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 Source: somabay.com
 Business result: 

Soma Bay Company CFO Mohammed Serry credits JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

solutions as a key factor in executing “a very aggressive turnaround plan”. As a
result, his team has helped Soma Bay overcome the recent downturn and created a
more stable operating model with the revenue achieving more than 700 million
Egyptian pounds over the last four years. Occupancy rates are rising at its five
hotels (Kempinski, Sheraton, Robinson Club, The Westin, and The Breakers). In
addition, Soma Bay Development Company is in the process of building 500
vacation homes in six seaside communities - with 120 units completed and 380
more under construction (Baum, 2017).

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 Part 2: Enterprise Information systems analysis

 Business process description:

From the very beginning, Soma Bay used Excel-based systems. The database
collects data from many divisions and departments in a firm and from a large
number of key business processes in manufacturing and production, finance and
accounting, sales and marketing, and human resources, making the data available
for applications that support nearly all an organization’s internal business
activities. When new information is entered by one process, the next information is
made available to other business processes step by step (see Figure below). As we
can see, this process is obviously lacking connection among departments and
working without instant information.

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For example, if a new customer books a resort or uses Soma Bay's services, after
they complete the registration, the system will verify the customer's credit limit,
schedule them, determine the optimal waiting time for their service and stock up
on necessary items from the inventory. If the inventory is not enough to fulfill the
order, the system will schedule additional production, order the necessary materials
and components from the suppliers to serve the customer's requirements.

Sales and production forecasts took quite a long time to update this information.
Also, the similarity occurred to the company's ledger and cash levels, which are
updated manually with sales and expense information from the purchase order.
Users and managers can only access the system and find out that particular order
after the whole procedure is finished to know about how the business is doing.
Also, the system is not able to generate enterprise-wide data for cost and profit
management analysis.

 Analyze the information systems to improve the business process

(a) The types of inefficiencies (delays,etc.) associated with the manual execution of
this process.

The primary problem of Soma Bay that is evident in this case study is the
fluctuation of operational costs and revenues that greatly hindered its operations.
The problems that the company faces started during the political upheavals that led
to the Egyptian Revolution and, ultimately, the removal of President Hosni
Mubarak from power. This political situation had a tremendous impact on the
Egyptian economy. One of the economic impacts was foreign exchange
fluctuations. 

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In the long run, these led to profitability challenges. In the same period, the hotel
occupancy of the organization was reduced by 50, especially in 2015. 

During this period, the organization could not effectively monitor or manage its
operations and cost because it used an excel system that had to be manipulated
manually. Managers had to manually manipulate spreadsheets to understand the
basic drivers of profitability, and it often took too long to obtain the information
needed for sound decision making. In the long term, the company lacked real-time
information that it could rely upon for its decision-making and it was difficult for
them to manage its aggressive growth plans, which included the construction of
1000 new homes over a five-year period.

(b) The role of enterprise systems in supporting this business. Identify the most
important pieces of information these systems captured.

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 Benefits of Soma Bay’s new enterprise system ( follow the figure above):

 It helps the data required to closely track costs, providing information about
cash management and cash flow for sustaining the expansion level. Specifically, it
could create standardized business processes across functional areas and provide
timely reports that explain the profitability of each business unit using a standard
chart of accounts. The software can identify the profitability drivers and growth
drivers of a business. Enterprise One seamlessly combines data from the general
ledger and other financial systems with data from operational systems. Soma Bay’s
Enterprise One cloud platform makes it easy to create cash flow reports, project
management reports, accounts receivable aging reports, facility management
reports, and key performance indicator reports throughout Soma Bay’s distributed
organization. Company management also appreciates Oracle Cloud IaaS disaster
recovery capabilities. Several years ago, water from an upper floor flooded Soma
Bay’s Cairo data centre. The company was able to restore data and resume
operations quickly because it had backups stored in Oracle Cloud.
 It helps monitor cash flow and payments to contractors. The provided
financial data helped managers carefully control fixed operating expenses, helping
to minimize losses. JD Edwards Enterprise One contains more than 80 separate
application modules designed to support a wide range of business processes. The
software suite also features mobile applications. Soma Bay uses the JD Edwards
Enterprise One modules for all of the organization and management activities
(Financials, Procurement, Inventory Management, Job Cost, Real Estate
Management, Homebuilder Management, Capital Asset Maintenance, Service

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 Management, and Time and Labor). JD Edwards Enterprise One Homebuilder
Management helps Soma Bay coordinate activities and analyze profitability

throughout its home-building cycle down to the lot level. JD Edwards

EnterpriseOne Real Estate Management streamlines financial, operational, and
facilities management processes for finished properties, coordinating tasks among
teams and providing a comprehensive management view of each unit. The Job
Cost module shows ongoing costs for the real estate business, which helps
management allocate expenses for materials, labour, and other needs and also track
expenses against the budgets and forecasts established at the outset of each
facilities management project. 
 It shows the impact of falling occupancy rates on the business, excluding
foreign exchange effects, to help management measure overall performance by
legal entities. Managers can identify projects with codes and merge them with
financial account numbers to determine budget expenses versus actual expenses.
They can thereby verify if complex projects are on track and share expense data
among divisions. The Enterprise One software creates currency-neutral financial
reports. This helps reconcile revenue from Soma Bay’s tourism division.

Part 3: Practical Tasks

Applying IoT in Soma Bay's hotels and services
Predictive and Preventive Maintenance:
By adding IoTized chatbots and voice assistants, IoT technology can provide
brilliant methods to tailor the customer support experience at Soma Bay hotels.
Many hotel chains, such as Marriot and Best Western, have long used these
strategies to provide superior customer service (Biz4intellia, 2021). These

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establishments provide greater experiences by letting consumers reserve their
rooms, a table at their preferred restaurant, or spa sessions by simply speaking their

desires via a smart device. This saves everyone's time and effort by eliminating
manual interactions, and it also allows authorities to submit many requests at once,
considerably enhancing the business's ROI.
Smart Controlling:
Another potential application of IoT in the hotel business is to warn you to take
immediate action in the event of any anomalous asset performance. The most
efficient IoT concepts are predictive and preventive maintenance, which help
improve asset operability and predict future scenarios for safety (Rangaiah, 2021).
The main advantage of doing so is that it allows for on-time equipment
maintenance or allows adequate time for replacements before the gadget stops
working totally. This eliminates the bother of alerting management to even the
tiniest flaws.

Applying AI in business process

Virtual concierge: Hotels in New York and Tokyo are already using robots to
check visitors in and conduct other tasks, while Hilton introduced "Connie," an AI-
enabled robot concierge, two years ago (Hospitality Technology, 2018). Connie
now concentrates on answering questions and offering recommendations, but
virtual concierges are also available as apps. Currently, Soma Bay hotels may use
virtual concierge simulations to make guests more comfortable by altering room
temperatures and ensuring that pillows are delivered according to guest
preferences.

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Customer experience: Hotels in Soma Bay can employ AI to consistently deliver
a terrific customer experience, even when something goes wrong and the service
falls short of expectations. For example, if a customer has a long check-in time, is
bothered by noisy neighbors, complains about WiFi speed, or has scheduling

issues, an AI-enabled CRM can recommend solutions. A unique perk or amenity

can transform a problem into a positive and retain clients.

Applying Machine Learning in business process

Predicting Seasonal Service Demands:
Certain seasons exist in the hospitality industry, during which particular services
are in higher demand than others. These seasons could be related to genuine
climatic seasons or not. Whatever the situation may be, now is when Soma Bay
can make the most money, and they want to take advantage of it.
Deep learning can be used to complete this task. By evaluating raw data from the
past and accurately projecting the future trend, a computer may readily find the
association between components that generate this seasonal demand. This is known
as Predictive Analysis, and it involves using historical patterns to forecast future
outcomes (Aggarwal, 2018).
Competitive Pricing
One of the most effective ways for Soma Bay managers to attract clients is through
competitive pricing. To attract as many clients as possible, businesses strive to
deliver services at the lowest possible cost while maintaining a profit margin.
Machine Learning can aid in this situation. The data can be processed through
predictive models and analyzed based on seasonality, hotel history, local events,
local competition, third-party promotions, and external real-time events, and then

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used to deliver the best potential pricing for any service and give enterprises an
edge in the market.

Conclusion
After visiting Soma Bay’s website and analyzing its business process, I discovered
certain faults when operating this process. Managers at Soma Bay, however, has
leveraged technology to survive, and even prosper during turbulent times as they
deployed the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne software and systematically moved their
information systems to the cloud. The company’s agile information systems help
protect it against future disruptions to the business, ensuring an outstanding
experience for visitors and residents. It might be a better place if the company can
apply several proposals about innovative solutions which I have mentioned above
in their business process to enhance enterprise efficiency.

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 Total words: 2051

Reference List
1. Aggarwal, M., 2018. Application Of Machine Learning and Deep Learning In the
Hospitality Industry. [online] Medium. Available at:
https://medium.com/@manuj.aggarwal/application-of-machine-learning-and-deep-
learning-in-the-hospitality-industry-ca9675ce7b94 [Accessed 1 January 2022].
2. Baum, D., 2017. Destination Cloud. [online] Dbaumcomm.com. Available at:
http://dbaumcomm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Baum-Soma-Bay-Feature.pdf
[Accessed 20 December 2021].
3. Biz4intellia, 2021. Applying IoT Concepts in the Hospitality Industry. [online] Available
at: https://www.biz4intellia.com/blog/applying-iot-concepts-in-the-hospitality-industry/
[Accessed 31 December 2021].
4. Gidumal, J., 2020. Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality.
Available at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333242550_Current_Applications_of_Artificial
_Intelligence_in_Tourism_and_Hospitality [Accessed 1 January 2022].
5. Hospitality Technology, 2018. 5 Ways AI and Big Data Are Transforming the Hotel
Industry. [online] Available at: https://hospitalitytech.com/5-ways-ai-and-big-data-are-
transforming-hotel-industry [Accessed 1 January 2022].
6. Laudon, K. and Laudon, J., 2019. Essentials of management information systems.
Harlow, England: Pearson.

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7. Rangaiah, M., 2021. 9 IoT Applications in the Hospitality Industry | Analytics Steps.
[online] Analyticssteps.com. Available at: https://www.analyticssteps.com/blogs/9-iot-
applications-hospitality-industry [Accessed 1 January 2022].
8. Somabay | Egypt. 2021. Somabay. [online] Available at: https://somabay.com/  
[Accessed 31 December 2021].
9. Wikipedia contributors, (2021). Soma Bay. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Soma_Bay&oldid=1049356396
[Accessed 31 December 2021].

Case Study (Laudon, K. and Laudon, J., 2019)

Soma Bay Prospers with ERP in the Cloud

Soma Bay is a 10-million-square-mile resort community on the Egyptian shore
of the Red Sea. It has many attractions that make it a first-class vacation
paradise, including five hotels, a championship golf course, water sport
facilities, a world-class spa, and luxury vacation homes. Soma Bay
Development Company is headquartered in Hurghada, Egypt and has more than
2,000 employees.
Unfortunately, political upheavals and economic conditions have taken a toll on
occupancy rates and profitability. When President Hosni Mubarak was
overthrown during the Egyptian revolution of 2011, there was a sharp
devaluation of Egyptian currency. In the years that followed, political
conditions stabilized and the Egyptian economy recovered, but the tourism
industry lost U.S. $1.3 billion after the downing of a commercial airliner over
the Sinai Desert in late 2015. Soma Bay Development Company’s hotel

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occupancy rates plummeted from more than 50 percent in 2015 to 25 percent in
the first quarter of 2016.
Foreign exchange fluctuations and political upheavals are forces beyond Soma
Bay’s control, but what the company’s management can do during downturns is
react intelligently by closely monitoring operations and costs. This is possible
thanks to the company’s use of a JD Edwards Enterprise One ERP system from
Oracle with applications and data residing in Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure as a
Service (Oracle Cloud IaaS).

In the past, Soma Bay Development Company had tried to run much of the
company using unwieldy Excel-based systems. Managers had to manually
manipulate spreadsheets to understand the basic drivers of profitability, and it
often took too long to obtain the information needed for sound decision making.
These systems made it difficult for Soma Bay to manage its aggressive growth
plans, which included construction of 1000 new homes over a five-year period.
Mohammed Serry, Soma Bay Company’s CFO, and his team selected JD
Edwards Enterprise One for a solution because it could create standardized
business processes across functional areas and provide timely reports that
explain the profitability of each business unit using a standard chart of accounts.
The software can identify the profitability drivers and growth drivers of a
business. Enterprise One seamlessly combines data from the general ledger and
other financial systems with data from operational systems.
Soma Bay’s Enterprise One cloud platform makes it easy to create cash flow
reports, project management reports, accounts receivable aging reports, facility
management reports, and key performance indicator reports throughout Soma
Bay’s distributed organization. Company management also appreciates Oracle

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Cloud IaaS disaster recovery capabilities. Several years ago, water from an
upper floor flooded Soma Bay’s Cairo data center. The company was able to
restore data and resume operations quickly because it had backups stored in
Oracle Cloud.
JD Edwards Enterprise One contains more than 80 separate application modules
designed to support a wide range of business processes. The software suite also
features mobile applications that support both iOS and Android and can be used

on smartphones and tablets. Soma Bay uses the JD Edwards Enterprise One
modules for Financials, Procurement, Inventory Management, Job Cost, Real
Estate Management, Homebuilder Management, Capital Asset Maintenance,
Service Management, and Time and Labor. JD Edwards Enterprise One
Homebuilder Management helps Soma Bay coordinate activities and analyze
profitability throughout its home-building cycle down to the lot level. JD
Edwards Enterprise One Real Estate Management streamlines financial,
operational, and facilities management processes for finished properties,
coordinating tasks among teams and providing a comprehensive management
view of each unit. The Job Cost module shows ongoing costs for the real estate
business, which helps management allocate expenses for materials, labor, and
other needs and also track expenses against the budgets and forecasts
established at the outset of each facilities management project. Managers can
identify projects with codes and merge them with financial account numbers to
determine budget expenses versus actual expenses. They can thereby verify if
complex projects are on track and share expense data among divisions.

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The Enterprise One software creates currency-neutral financial reports. This
helps reconcile revenue from Soma Bay’s tourism division (which caters to
Germany and other parts of Europe) with its home sales division (which is
aimed primarily at Egyptians) to neutralize the effect of different currencies on
financial results. Home building accounts for about 25 percent of corporate
revenue.
Having a dual revenue stream mitigates risks. If the tourism business is slow,
Soma Bay still has revenue from the real estate business, and vice versa. The
ERP system provides the data required to closely track costs. For example, in

2017 Soma Bay spent 100 million Egyptian pounds (equivalent to

approximately U.S. $5.7 million) on new construction. The Enterprise One
system provided the information about cash management and cash flow for
sustaining this level of expansion. Soma Bay can carefully monitor cash flow
and payments to contractors.
During the 2016 downturn, Soma Bay used the Enterprise One cost
management and profitability capabilities to provide detailed financial data that
helped managers carefully control fixed operating expenses, helping to
minimize losses. Enterprise One provided a solid understanding of costs and
profitability, even though revenue came from different currencies and markets.
It was able to show the impact of falling occupancy rates on the business,
excluding foreign exchange effect, to help management measure overall
performance by legal entity. This knowledge helped Soma Bay weather the
downturn and implement an aggressive turnaround plan.
Today, 95 percent of Soma Bay staff members use the Enterprise One software
in some capacity. The company has a more stable operating model. Occupancy

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rates at its five hotels are rising. Soma Bay Development Company is building
500 vacation homes in six seaside communities. According to Cherif Samir,
Financial Controller for Soma Bay, being able to track every penny the
company spends on a project has revolutionized the business.

The End

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