Rene Batsford is responsible for IT at EAT, a fast-food chain with the clear-cut objective of giving customers the best, freshest food, soup and coffee at the most reasonable prices.
“I joined EAT a couple of years ago with a retail IT background. Previously, I had been the IT director at the 02 Arena and before that I had spent seven years with cosmetics producer and retailer, Molton Brown. While manufacturing and selling shampoos and lipsticks and producing sandwiches may appear to be worlds apart, the IT principles for evolving brands are the same.
My specific brief was to improve our back office processes as we were often getting two versions of the truth. In other words, we were struggling to get our financial position to match our sales and the stock in our shops.
It was entirely understandable. More often than not, the discrepancies were a result of human error. Unfortunately, our incumbent back office system was responsible for all manner of blunders.
Unless you were an expert at using the system, it was very easy to make mistakes. As an expanding business, we had to tackle these processes, eliminate the opportunity for variances and introduce good practice workflows.
We had gone out to have a look at the EPOS market to do a comparative study of the various providers who had the capacity and professionalism to work with a busy, expanding chain like EAT. Inevitably, most of the people we spoke to wanted to change our entire estate and adopted a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude if we didn’t want their off-the-shelf package.
However, after a while it became clear we wanted systems integration work, rather than reinventing the wheel.
A more flexible approach was needed, which is where Intelligent Business Systems came in. IBS had a considerable reputation in the market place and the experience in the hospitality sector of working with several clients who ran similar operations and business models to us. They could demonstrate a proven track record of integration work with clients and showed a good mix of technical and people capabilities. Critically, they were willing to listen objectively to what we wanted to do, assess it and give us a fair response about what can be achieved.
Without slipping too much into sales speak, they are very focused on the customer. Just like EAT is all about the customer. The initiatives they recommended were in line with what we wanted to achieve so there was a clear synergy between the two businesses. There was common ground from an IT perspective too. The developers, like us with our current solutions, used an SQL database. A standard Microsoft framework was at the heart of IBS’s StockLink.net enterprise solution. This would greatly benefit the development work if we were both using the same infrastructure. Without question, it was a great decision to use IBS. The development work they’ve done, and the introduction of StockLink.net to our IT capability has allowed us to introduce good practice by technology.
Staff at the shops find the system’s workflow processes so much easier and clearer than before. They cannot complain about a complicated system. Now, prior to closing up at the end of the day, they have to complete specific tasks such as write offs, labour quotas and claims. This rigid, meticulous approach means we’re far less likely to have variances as the data is automatically polled into our financial system. This has allowed us to remodel processes by eradicating wasted resources, human error and inefficiencies associated with double entry and the way we used to do things.
We’re far more focused with our approach, our workflow tolerances, extractions and alerts are now first class. Bespoke ordering and business reporting has considerably improved the way we operate and we appreciate Gareth and his team’s flexibility to cultivate modules within the software to meet our requirements.
By investing in IBS’s integration talents, StockLink.net software and a flexible approach, we have the right processes in place to accommodate our current estate and future expansion plans.”