Published on the 04/04/2023 | Written by Heather Wright
Three become one…
Restaurant Brands is hailing the success of a group-wide ERP implementation, saying the project – ‘probably the largest foundation project ever undertaken by the company’ – has resulted in new efficiencies, productivity, cost savings and agility.
Project Camino has seen the fast food company, whose brands include KFC, Pizza Hut, Carl’s Jnr and Taco Bell in New Zealand and KFC and Taco Bell in Australia, as well as brands in Hawaii and California, replace three different financial systems, all more than 20 years old, with an SAP cloud-based offering.
The project brings together all geographies and brands on a single platform, according to Restaurant Brands latest financial report.
“It makes us smarter with our resources while maintaining optimum product quality and customer experience.”
The latest financial report shows costs of $8.2 million for an IT system implementation. The company’s 2022 Interim report for the six months ending 30 June 2022, show expenses for the ERP implementation over 18 months of $8.8 million, including some unaudited results.
The company had previously flagged that it expected to spend in excess of $7 million on the project.
Nhu-Thuy Le-Kim, Restaurant Brands group systems accountant, led the project.
She paid tribute on LinkedIn recently to implementation partner Lagom, which won the SAP Cloud Delivery Excellence Award 2023 at the recent inaugural SAP New Zealand Partner Excellence Awards.
Le-Kim says the new system provides ‘a tremendous foundation to grow’ and allows the company to ‘move faster, share information and work better together as one group’.
Alice Liu, one of Restaurant Brands’ California financial team, says automating a lot of what used to be manual processes has been ‘a welcome breath of fresh air’.
“All four regions are now aligned working with the same data on a bigger platform so we can learn best practice from each other and agree our decisions as a group.”
The company says in its annual report that during these inflationary times, the system is flexing ‘very efficiently’ allowing for faster scrutiny of costs and timely, better decision making, down to individual store level.
Elyse Hooper, from the New Zealand finance team, says by noticing shifts in certain cost trends, the company can be one step ahead in the changing market, enabling it to discuss opportunities for savings with managers.
“It makes us smarter with our resources while maintaining optimum product quality and customer experience.”
The implementation comes as higher than expected cost increases for food hit the sector hard and Restaurant Brands says while the increases appear to be easing, the new ERP system is helping identify and implement the consumer pricing sweet spot ‘in double quick time’.
Le-Kim says collaboration among the right mix of people involved in the project, collaborating remotely during lock-down and across different time zones, was key to success, along with transparency, agility, pragmatism and frank and honest exchanges to ensure the right issues were addressed and the right decisions were made at the right time.
“We were outcome-focused with no room given to sweating the small stuff,” she says.
“I’m truly proud of everyone’s efforts and input into what will now provide the business with a tremendous foundation to grow.”
The company has also moved towards a zero-trust cybersecurity approach to help manage the changing business dynamics.
Kenny Thein, Restaurant Brands CIO, says “There are many more moving parts in our business compared with, say, 10 years ago. And fragmented too, with the uptake of BYOD and laptops.”
The move towards a zero-trust approach security posture is designed to help manage that, he says.
“With our multi-faceted cyber security approach, working 24/7 to analyse, identify and isolate any threats, we are now more secure than ever, while being able to move faster, easier and safer.”
