With Adatis managed services, a large restaurant group has turned its recently built data analytics solution into a powerhouse that delivers detailed insights from across the business, fast.
Situation.
In 2017, this large restaurant group hired a team of third-party developers to build a new platform to handle data analytics for its 350 locations across the UK.
The restaurant industry runs 365 days a year, and rarely on a standard 9-5, which meant their data processing would often begin at around 4am to keep up with its locations’ early starts. To deliver the insights the business needed to make operational decisions at the right time, they would have likely needed to hire three full-time data analytics specialists, on flexible schedules, to manage and support the platform. This would have meant a significant addition to its operating expenses.
So, rather than hiring full-time specialists, they looked to Adatis to support and maintain the solution it had already built. At a compelling price point, with scale, consistency and a whole consulting team to support the partnership, Adatis was the obvious choice.
After a set of meetings with key decision-makers, it became clear that this restaurant chain could achieve much more with the right help.
Approach.
Taking on a platform that’s been developed by another party can be a daunting task, but Adatis’ three-month, three-step service handover plan meant the switch was carefully managed throughout.
In the initial service design stage, the Adatis specialists worked with this large restaurant group and its team to understand the project’s requirements. In the second stage, service transition, the teams completed a technical handover, ensuring Adatis had all the knowledge it needed to deliver a high standard of service. The teams then created a continuous improvement plan for the first six months of operation.
The final stage, service operation, included a two-week parallel run with the original developers to help smooth some of the common teething issues of new bespoke data analytics, such as streamlining data collection from multiple source systems.
As well as taking on the ongoing management of the company’s virtual servers within Microsoft Azure, the Adatis team also worked with the chain to make large-scale changes to the solution to make it even fitter for purpose. This included simplifying the approvals process and improving communication lines to different suppliers.
Outcomes.
Enhanced support from Adatis has also enabled the group to use its data in new ways. New reporting capabilities, delivered through Power BI dashboards, mean leaders and managers throughout the business can access detailed custom reports at both a chain and individual restaurant level. With daily, weekly and yearly insight into covers, turnover, wastage and other KPIs, they can make more informed decisions about sourcing, ordering and layouts for its restaurants.
Integration with their CRM system has enabled this restaurant chain to improve its marketing campaign management too. With insights into factors as broad as customer demographics, and as granular as when a specific customer visited a restaurant last, they can now send carefully timed and targeted marketing, such as vouchers, to persuade customers back after a long absence.
Initially, this restaurant group aimed to deliver its reports by 9am every day, but often missed that goal. Now, thanks to the improvements by Adatis, reports are not only consistently delivered by 7am – a full two hours earlier – but they also cover larger volumes of data. This gives key personnel across the business more detailed insight into what’s going on, promptly and reliably. Plus, Adatis now provides them with on-call analytics support from 5am, seven days a week.
Adatis is also helping to provide insight into key metrics that were previously only available to decision makers and managers every 24 hours, such as sales figures. By expanding the solution, this restaurant group no longer has to wait for the following morning report to understand how individual restaurants or pubs are performing – the data is automatically updated every two hours, giving managers more timely knowledge of how they can adapt to boost sales or reduce wastage.
Crucially for this group, the managed service from Adatis can maintain a consistently high level of support, even as the company changes and expands, and new stakeholders join the team. Now, as the chain invests further in the platform, there’s huge potential for a cycle of continuous improvement that will offer new capabilities as new business needs arise.