Rotana Corporate Sustainability Report 2014

22 “Bullet-proof financial planning is underpinned by practical policies, state-of-the-art information systems and a two-tier audit process that ensures management and operations performance is continuously reviewed and evaluated.” Hamid Abou Sahyoun Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Financial transparency and control Rotana’s finance systems are based on a very simple principle: that real financial management can only be achieved through transparency and control. These two accounting principles inform everything we do and ensure an up-to- the-minute understanding of where our hotels stands financially – as well as a clear understanding of how improved cost efficiencies will affect the future. Rotana’s systems provide feedback to property owners on every aspect of their property, be it occupancy trends, colleague productivity or cost efficiency. Financial planning is underpinned by practical policies, state-of-the-art information systems and a two-tier audit process that ensures management and operations performance is continuously reviewed and evaluated. Our operations manuals and authorisation systems are geared towards maintaining control over every operating cost. Combined, these tools give owners and managers the means to maximise sales growth, ensure profitability, and deliver strictly controlled expenditure. Audit process Grant Thornton performs an annual audit of the core business for all Rotana hotels and support processes to highlight gaps in internal controls and also review the business and support processes for identifying improvement opportunities. A risk based approach is followed by: • Evaluating the control objectives of the main processes • Evaluating the risks surrounding each process • Evaluating the existing controls in each process • Identifying the main gaps and deficiencies in the control system • Recommending and proposing solutions, controls and systems that remediate the gaps and manage risks Findings under each category’s criteria are highlighted as low, medium and high risk, hence enabling our hotels to priorities and act on the recommendations to strengthen the business and support processes. A review of the status of implementation of recommendations made are carried out annually and added to the report presented to the management.