Ethara turns to Oracle Cloud to redesign core processes for global expansion

Created through the integration of two industry leaders, Ethara is an event and venue management powerhouse. The company’s name comes from the Arabic word for “thrill,” which is exactly what it has provided to more than 17 million visitors across its world-class events and venues over the last 15 years. Ethara’s dynamic operations include delivering large-scale motorsports events and hosting some of the biggest music concerts in the Middle East, as well as a number of other iconic entertainment events.

This brought the company success but began to put stress on its aging technology, including its Oracle E-Business Suite environment. Disjointed on-premises systems struggled to scale for growth and resulted in inefficiencies across finance, procurement, and human resources. For instance, the HR organization found it difficult to juggle payroll, talent management, and recruiting activities and manage different transactions for the workforce of 300 employees.

Moreover, siloed data sources made it difficult to consolidate and access up-to-date information. This hindered planning capabilities across lines of business, which was essential given the rapidly changing scale and scope of Ethara’s events.

Ethara leaders recognized that a change was needed to increase efficiency, support continued expansion, and allow for easier access to accurate, real-time data. After carefully evaluating leading cloud providers, the company selected the unified suite of Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM), and Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM).

The fully integrated platform was attractive to Ethara because it would help eliminate operational disconnects and establish a single source of data for users across finance, procurement, and HR. Combining this with powerful AI-driven analysis tools would help generate meaningful insights that executives could use to uncover new growth opportunities. It would also help the company to plan and respond to changing client demands more quickly. In addition, the cloud native applications would offer greater scalability, which aligned with Ethara’s vision for regional and global growth.

With the help of its partner Cognizant, Ethara implemented the suite of Oracle Cloud Applications while meeting shareholders’ data sovereignty requirements to store data locally, thanks to Oracle’s vast network of public cloud regions. The rollout helped establish standardized best practices across finance, procurement, and HR all on a single, connected platform. Now, roughly 90% of all back-office processes flow through Oracle Cloud.

After adopting the unified suite of applications, Ethara consolidated cross-departmental data into a single location for easier access. This gave users more confidence in the data and helped them build connected financial and operational plans across the business with Oracle Cloud EPM. The ability to forecast costs and profitability, staffing, and equipment needs was a big win for the business, providing greater flexibility to adapt to change. The application also enhanced reporting, giving executives data-driven insights to guide decision-making.

Ethara used Oracle Cloud SCM and Oracle Cloud ERP to integrate its supply chain and finance workflows. It tapped Oracle Procurement to simplify sourcing, maximize value from suppliers, and automate the procure-to-pay process. Procurement data automatically flowed back into Oracle Cloud ERP, where the company analyzed over 50,000 annual financial transactions to better understand cashflows and prevent overspending, thanks to the application’s budgetary control and spend analytics features.

Also, the company created a more efficient HR landscape with Oracle Cloud HCM. Tools such as Oracle Recruiting and Oracle Payroll helped automate day-to-day processes, fostering accurate, on-time payments and enhancing Ethara’s ability to attract, retain, and develop talent with ease.

The move from legacy systems to an integrated, cloud native platform improved system availability and performance while reducing resource demands to maintain on-premises servers. Scalability was a major concern in the past environment, with operations already spread across three time zones. Oracle Cloud Applications eliminated that barrier by automatically scaling for more demanding workloads, no matter how quickly the business grew.