Franchise holding company for the Scooters and Maxi's restaurant chains, Taste Holdings, has implemented a business intelligence solution from Microsoft Gold Certified partner, IS Partners.
The solution encompassed IS Partners' Sales PERFORMANCE! solution for optimised analysis of financial and sales-based information, as well as Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services for automation and consolidation of reporting company-wide.
Carlo Gonzaga, CEO at Taste Holdings, explains that the company's fast-food and restaurant branches are franchised, and thus operate independently. To optimise sales performance across the entire business, there was a requirement to consolidate reporting and analysis of sales-based information from each of the various outlets.
Business situation
Taste Holdings' branches previously relied on manual processes, such as fax and e-mail, to submit the previous week's performance figures to the head office, as well as once-off questions that management may have wanted answers to.
"Our business is highly competitive with a wide range of KPIs. Information was manually captured once received at head office once a week and, with little depth of detail for analysis purposes, franchise consultants often spent entire days producing figures rather than identifying key business insights, and spending time in the field," says Gonzaga.
The biggest challenge was to get clean data from each point of sale to the head office in an efficient, timely way. Information needed to be submitted from every store every day, with tools in place to analyse performance of the various outlets and regions as well as the group's performance as a whole.
Information drives performance
All of Taste Holdings' franchise operations were brought online, through a combination of ADSL and its own VPN, totalling more than 160 outlets.
Information from each store is now submitted and consolidated daily, and reports scheduled and automatically e-mailed to all relevant users. "We no longer have to manually extract information relating to the performance of our operations. All data is now current and easily accessed," says Gonzaga.
"In addition, we are now able to look at consolidated information relating to the consumption of ingredients in pizzas and various other recipes, for example, and so hone procurement decisions as well as react quicker to consumer demands. We are also able to correlate sales data against key marketing activities, with the information just one day old, compared to one month old previously."
He adds that the implementation will ensure future capabilities to better use information for marketing purposes and analysis of customer-based information. "We will, for instance, be able to identify relationships in data to determine what is typically bought along with specific pizzas. This will drive advertising and promotional campaigns in future, while information analysis can further assist in determining new site locations, menu items, turnover optimisation and improved allocation of advertising spend. Overall, the key bottom line impact is that our franchise consultants spend less time in the office and by spending more time in the field can service more outlets per consultant."
Information will also be made available back to the branches, with details on each store as well as consolidated regional information. "Each store will be able to peg their performance against the rest of the region or country," he says.
Gonzaga adds that productivity has been vastly improved at an executive level. The quality of information has further ensured improvement of strategic decision-making. "The value of regular, up to date and quality information in a franchise scenario, where each business is independently owned, is of immense value to Taste Holdings."
Solution choice
IS Partners offered a strong case for keeping the technology solution uncomplicated and ensuring ease-of-use through the implementation of Microsoft-based tools. This further ensured seamless integration into Taste Holdings' existing IT environment.
"IS Partners' process-based approach ensured follow-through on each stage of development, from sales and technology through to product management and solution delivery - a rare quality in IT today.
"Changes in the scope of the project were also managed very tightly to ensure our expectations were met. The value of commitment from a CEO level at Taste Holdings can also not be underestimated in terms of the impact on project success. Buy-in from the top was crucial to achieving our objectives," Gonzaga concludes.
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