McDonald's South Africa has implemented an improved sales and operational reporting application, developed by Lightedge's software development arm, Applied Concepts.
The system provides its head office management with current and historical weekly sales and operational information for all 100 stores nationwide.
McDonald's South Africa can now view sales and operational information for any of its branches for any given week with a system that is lightning fast, says Peter Moss, Business Development Manager at Lightedge.
Incorporating best practice design and data storage, together with an interface that reinforces ease of use for productivity, this solution equips McDonald's with the capacity to support the expansion of its footprint in SA.
McDonald's South Africa has constantly invested in its IT infrastructure for the capturing of data and associated management reporting tools. But, its exponential growth in the local market and desire to achieve greater operational efficiency meant its old system could no longer handle the growing number of users and data resource requirements. It was really bulging at the seams by the time they came to us, says Moss.
This required a leading-edge platform, which could seamlessly integrate with McDonald's existing infrastructure and offer infinite flexibility for the evolution of the group's operations.
Applied Concepts' solution was an application built on the Microsoft .NET 2 framework and written using C# with MS SQL Server 2005 as the data repository.
"We developed the solution using service-orientated architecture to allow for extensibility, scalability and interoperability with future applications, as well as for longevity of the solution. Since McDonald's experienced an immediate business need, we pushed for a rapid turnaround time of one month from time of order to delivery," says Moss.
This solution includes online help and administration tools for system maintenance required by McDonald's to expand its business in SA. Applied Concepts further facilitated the migration of all historical data from the original system (introduced five years ago) to the new system, with minimum change management on McDonald's' side.
"Lightedge set high expectations at the outset and we were pleasantly surprised when they exceeded these. We now have an efficient operational reporting system that gives us what we required and more. Lightedge kept us informed on a weekly basis of the project status and we are very pleased with its overall efficiency, technical expertise and rapid turnaround on our urgent requirements," says Mervyn Pillay, IT Manager at McDonald's.
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