Integrating growth

With a fast growing business, MS Madhava Rao, Group IT Head and his team are working to establish the complete integration and consolidation of all business processes and systems thus encompassing all business disciplines across more than 70 locations at the EMKE Group.

As a private sector organisations with over 18,000 employees, over the years, EMKE Group has ventured into diverse businesses operating in the UAE, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, Kenya, Tanzania and Benin. Operating popular brands of retail chain stores that include the Lulu chain of supermarkets, department stores, hypermarkets and now shopping malls (Al Falah Plaza and Emirates General Market), the company caters to over 300,000 customers everyday and enjoys over 32% of the total retail market share within the GCC.

The project, called Project Enterprise II is an extension of EMKE’s Corporate Strategic Business Long Term Plan. Project Enterprise I implemented the Group's core enterprise applications with minor integration of other business critical applications such as Point of Sale etc.

“The project commenced on June 01, 2007 with a phased approach and consists of Intelligent Buildings Management System; BI, Integrated Planning and Enterprise Portals; Point of Sale System and Warehouse Management System – LFS 400,” shares Rao.

“The primary business goal of the project is to help the company enhance efficiency, increase productivity, gain competitive advantage, enable business innovation and manage the supply chain more effectively,” he adds.

Project’s Impact

The IBMS subproject is expected to drive gains in efficiency and cost savings in a number of areas: Manpower savings by enabling a smaller team to manage the entire system via a single operating console;

CAPEX saving; Energy savings; Integrated security and surveillance; Performance-based Operations and Maintenance (O&M); Enhanced customer experience and track KPIs and SLAs.

“The IBMS can centralise many management functions or even eliminate subsystem management applications thereby reducing CAPEX and integration effort. It also tracks and controls energy intensive equipment and systems and ensures that they are operated at optimum levels,” says Rao.

The IBMs will be able to more effectively pinpoint incidents and events and enable a rapid response that can be tracked and managed centrally.

”The IBMS will also be a customer facing system via the concierge, enabling tenants and shoppers to interact with the Mall through a single point of contact. The system also enables the enables the tracking of KPIs and SLAs via the management dashboard. This will be a key management tool for ongoing business process improvement,” Rao emphasises.