In collaboration with Lagom, Restaurant Brands launched an SAP ERP transformation project across several of its markets including Hawaii and California.
Restaurant Brands New Zealand, a corporate franchisee and specialist in managing multi-site branded food retail chains, has recently undertaken a modern cloud ERP transformation program to consolidate its multiple ERP systems. Anchored on RISE with SAP, the NZX- and ANZ-listed company deployed various SAP solutions to streamline operations across Australia, New Zealand, and the US with the support of Lagom, an SAP partner with offices in Auckland and Wellington.
Paul Tombleson, Lagom general manager of delivery who supervised the SAP project shared:
“The focus on doing the right things at the right time, while utilizing the RISE with SAP approach, resulted in a successful implementation across New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, and California in the space of 10 months.”
Auckland-based Restaurant Brands employs over 11,400 staff across New Zealand, Australia, California, and Hawaii and has 376 stores as of December 2022 including 109 KFC New Zealand, 72 KFC Australia, 75 KFC California (including 11 multi-brand KFC-Taco Bell stores), 39 Taco Bell Hawaii, 11 Taco Bell Australia, 13 Taco Bell New Zealand, 6 Pizza Hut New Zealand, 36 Pizza Hut Hawaii and 15 Carl’s Jr. New Zealand.
ERP Transformation Powered by SAP
Under the supervision and management of Lagom, Restaurant Brands selected SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition along with SAP EnableNow, SAP Concur, and SAP Business Transformation Platform (BTP) to enable the corporation’s pivot to the cloud– implementing a single, consistent ERP system. Commenting on Lagom’s management of the transformation project, Restaurant Brands group systems accountant and product owner Thuy Le-Kim said:
“Lagom was definitely the right fit for our organization. We’re a fairly lean and flat organization, so we needed a partner who was agile and had a lot of experience. We relied on and valued their expertise and their flexibility to adapt throughout the process.”
“We wanted a system that would be able to grow and evolve with the business. We now have consistent, robust processes that mean we can increase in size without needing to dramatically increase the number of people we need to run the business,” she added.
Le-Kim explained that the Restaurant Brands relied on SAP Best Practice to support the company’s unique approach to delivering key outcomes despite the different operations and practices per region. Lagom recently received the Cloud Delivery Excellence Award during the SAP NZ Partner Excellence Awards for its clear adoption of SAP best practices toward delivery growth.
Before the SAP project, the New Zealand fast food company operates several different ERPs across its markets and had faced operational inefficiencies due to a lack of automation. Sofiane Ainine, SAP ANZ head of midmarket, emphasized that critical to streamlining the food corporations’ processes to reach its business goals was the adoption of SAP cloud solutions. She detailed:
“Implementing SAP cloud solutions, including SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition, shows the value our RISE with SAP approach is delivering for customers. The ability to consolidate, streamline and standardize operations across multiple geographies is enabling Restaurant Brands to adapt to change faster and free up more resources across the organization to focus on opportunities for growth.”
Reaping Business Results
Restaurant Brands has been witnessing remarkable outcomes since going live with the massive SAP project in April 2022. The new automated SAP system delivers the following benefits to the food company:
- Faster payment runs, month-end processes, and consolidated reports for swift decision-making
- Enhanced supply chain management and planning to equip the company for any global supply chain disruptions
- Seamless handling and processing of more than 100 thousand orders
