Simon Patterson, Financial Director
Fat Cat Café Bars

"Our goal as a business is to always be competitive, hence the need to stay one step ahead. As we're obviously involved in the service industry, we can achieve this through our front of house operations, giving our customers the best possible experience every time they walk into one of our establishments. This, however, must be complemented by ensuring we remain lean, effective and cost-efficient as an organisation.

In essence, that means we don't waste time and money doing the same jobs two or three times. Nor do we want to become top heavy at head office when our staffing investment and commitment should be concentrating on service levels at our units. Most importantly, it means we have to be able to react quickly and effectively to business intelligence. To be able to do this we need to have hard and fast facts and figures.

As the financial director, I want to see the evidence on a screen or on a printed business sheet. Anecdotal feedback is welcome as a taster but it is only one person's snapshot and can never take into account the whole picture. Fortunately there is the technology out there in the market place from the likes of Intelligent Business Systems, our preferred POS supplier. They help give us a world view of the business as a whole. This info feeds every department within Fat Cat, from operations and human resources to marketing and accounts.

In keeping with our drive to stay at the top of our game, we've recently upgraded our POS system both at head office and at the units. IBS rolled out the technology to a tight 12-week deadline, installing new touchscreen POS terminals, PCs and StockLink cash and stock management software through broadband connections for finger-clicking speed. The results are impressive. Data is sent to head office every hour rather than large unwieldy overnight data transfers, so we have real-time reporting to criteria we set to help us run our business on a day-today basis.

We've worked with Gareth Powell, Mark Bagnall and the IBS team for several years and they, like us, look to constantly build upon their reputation as a market leader. As part of the enterprise package proposed to us, they placed the emphasis on a heavy commitment to raining so our managers would get the most out of the upgraded technology. These group training sessions were highly informative, starting off looking at day sessions before exploring weekly business sheets and stock management. What I liked was the fact they would look at all the different reasons as to why we were doing things.

Giving our managers a panoramic perspective shows how it benefits their customers, the operational side of their units and us at head office. The training sessions are an effective way of communicating why it is important to know the POS technology better than we may previously have felt appropriate. One great session highlighted why astute IT companies can really add value.

IBS training includes problem-solving and trouble-shooting, placing the emphasis on empowering the manager and unit team to look after the basics themselves. This means relatively simple functions like resetting printers can be done at unit level so things don't come to a stop when there is a minor problem. Crossing the t's and dotting the i's is typical of the IBS approach and we appreciate their professionalism."