Restaurant chain Pizza Hut said it is making significant savings
after installing software capable of analysing the financial
performance of the group's 200 branches.
Bill GoodwinPizza Hut is using the business intelligence system supplied by
Cognos to provide store managers with immediate feedback on their
branch's performance.
The system is able to spot branches or product lines that are
under-performing 12 hours earlier than the Microsoft Access
database it replaces, allowing managers to monitor profits
continually.
The Pizza Hut system polls Compaq Unix servers in each store to
gather a range of data, including product and labour costs and the
quantity of toppings used on each pizza.
A "traffic light" system alerts managers if sales of a
particular pizza are under-performing, or if there are
inconsistencies on the amount of topping on each pizza, by
highlighting the data with an amber or red light.
"If we could just knock 1% or 2% of the costs of the
bottom-performing stores, it would make a big difference [to the
whole business]," said David Wicks, IT director at Pizza Hut.
"We have data in disparate locations and we spend a lot of time
bringing it together. Cognos will allow us to bring it together
much more easily and quickly," he said.
The chain is planning to enhance the system, which is gradually
being rolled out to branches, by installing a store-wide virtual
private network.
The network will allow Pizza Hut's IT department to update
software in the branches automatically, and will give staff access
to e-mail, Web connections and labour scheduling software through
an in-house application service provider.
bill.goodwin@rbi.co.uk