ALKHOBAR, 20 August 2004 — Al-Falak, a leading IT and communications solutions provider in the GCC, recently conducted a specialist training program in PeopleSoft’s EnterpriseOne Real Estate Module for its clients in the real estate sector. The program, held at the company’s corporate headquarters in Alkhobar sought to leverage the advantages of the software in maximizing efficiencies and productivity gains for real estate organizations in the Middle East.
“The property development sector in the Kingdom is thriving and bigger construction projects are on the drawing board. This has raised the expectations of both owners and tenants. But the interaction between the two — the management and maintenance of the properties — and detailed accounting procedures are exceedingly complex and time consuming. Many organizations face the challenge of processing transactions and reporting across their real estate portfolios in an efficient and timely manner. Basic tasks, such as tenant billings, that have traditionally been processed in a decentralized environment can be extremely time-consuming. This decentralized processing can also lead to communication barriers between corporate offices and property sites, Al-Falak President and CEO Ahmed Ali Ashadawi said.
“Such delays can increase operational costs, as well as dull the competitive edge of an organization. While the choice to implement EnterpriseOne Real Estate Module will be the first step to ameliorating the situation, optimum benefits can only be derived from effective implementation. This is where training plays such an important role. Al-Falak’s decision to organize this training program is part of the company’s commitment to its large client base in the Middle East real estate sector. The objective is to maximize benefits for existing clients, as well as deliver information to potential clients in search for the right solution for their real estate management,” Ashadawi added.
PeopleSoft’s EnterpriseOne Real Estate Module offers a highly scalable, web-based processing engine with a high degree of functionality that can be used to enhance productivity and promote collaboration among employees, tenants, and owners. Using any Web browser, from any location in the world, at any time of day or night, the software enables real estate professionals and owners to access critical real estate information in real time from a single database in a centralized environment.
Al-Falak’s training program sought to detail the processes in the software that would economically resolve operational inefficiencies in diverse activities such as advanced retail client assistance memo (CAM) billings, retail sales forecasts, occupancy reporting, FASB 13 (Accounting for lease) entries, late fees and processing cash receipts. The training highlighted processes involved in automation of all tenant CAM, percentage rent, CPI or late fee billings, as well as ensuring accuracy of calculations.
The training also detailed procedures for absorption of massive growth in portfolio size while incurring minimal increases in overhead costs; deployment of roles-based portals and web applications to encourage remote processing in a single database and centralized environment; and reduction in processing time for transactional processing and real estate reporting.
Aside from Al-Falak’s existing and potential clients, the staff of the company also attended the training program, which served as a skill enhancement session for the employees. The company will be implementing the EnterpriseOne Real Estate Module within its corporate structure, thus complimenting the existing PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne Enterprise Resource Planning module in use.