Gourmet Burger Chain Ups Productivity by 20 Percent with ...



Overview

Country or Region: United States

Industry: Retail

Customer Profile

Located in the Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, area, Cowboy Red is a franchise chain of Red Robin Gourmet Burgers. The chain currently has four restaurants and plans to expand operations.

Business Situation

Cowboy Red was dissatisfied with its Peachtree accounting system. The franchise needed an accounting solution that would integrate with its current inventory software and produce detailed reporting.

Solution

Clifton Gunderson Technology Solutions (CGTS) helped Cowboy Red implement Microsoft® Business Solutions–Great Plains® software, configuring it to work with software the restaurant already used.

Benefits

■ 20 percent increase in productivity

■ Ability to produce consolidated and longevity reporting

■ Flexibility in accounting feature selection

■ Streamlined business processes

■ Easy integration with industry software

| | |“Working with CGTS on the Microsoft Great Plains conversion was much easier than I had anticipated. In just a few quick training sessions, I felt like I had been using Microsoft Great Plains forever.”

Jamie Lobb, Accounting Manager, Cowboy Red

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| | | |As a franchisee owner of four Red Robin Gourmet Burger restaurants in Texas, Cowboy Red has been |

| | | |serving customers since 1999. Cowboy Red was using Peachtree financial management software, which |

| | | |lacked integration to key systems and couldn’t deliver the financial reporting needed to run the |

| | | |business effectively. With the help of technology partner Clifton Gunderson Technology Solutions |

| | | |(CGTS), the franchisee switched to Microsoft® Business Solutions–Great Plains® (now part of Microsoft|

| | | |Dynamics™) software. Since implementing the Microsoft Business Solution, Cowboy Red has integrated |

| | | |its restaurant management and financial systems, increased the efficiency of key business processes |

| | | |by 20 percent, and improved internal reporting. Office staff is saving multiple days of work per |

| | | |week, and, due to these gains in process efficiency, Cowboy Red plans to open new restaurants without|

| | | |having to add administrative headcount. |

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Situation

Cowboy Red, a franchisee of Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, owns and operates four Red Robin restaurants in the Houston and Fort Worth, Texas, areas. Red Robin restaurants serve an imaginative selection of high-quality gourmet burgers in a family-friendly atmosphere, and have won numerous awards for Best Burger and Best Family Restaurant from independent newspapers and local reviewers in cities across North America.

From 1999 until 2003, Cowboy Red used Peachtree accounting software to help manage its financial activities. However, the company found significant shortcomings in the software, such as an inability to produce consolidated or longevity reporting. For instance, there was no ability to produce comparative restaurant reporting beyond one year; thus, the record of a report would expire one year beyond the date it was created. This required all reports to have a paper backup. In addition, Peachtree planned to discontinue support for the software version that Cowboy Red was using.

With four restaurants and more planned to open in the near future, Cowboy Red sought a solution that would help streamline its business processes and aid in the franchisee’s future expansion. Most important, Cowboy Red needed an accounting solution compatible with MenuLink Back Office Assistant. The franchisee uses two commercial software packages in the restaurant. Aloha software is used by employees to input orders, pay out the tickets, and track labor hours. Aloha then exports that information into Menulink, which combines the information received from Aloha with invoice information entered by restaurant managers directly into MenuLink. It also handles all the inventory needs for the restaurant and some of the basic in-house reporting.

The new solution needed to be able to import the information from MenuLink, record everyday cash sales, account for paid-in and paid-out transactions, and keep track of supplier invoices. Additionally, it needed to be capable of producing consolidated reporting that would make it possible to measure the financial performance of all restaurants—together, individually, by location, by volume, or by whatever the particular needs may be.

Solution

Cowboy Red elected to take part in a pilot implementation for a franchise-tailored, electronic accounting solution being jointly developed by Microsoft Certified Partner Clifton Gunderson Technology Solutions (CGTS) and Red Robin Gourmet Burgers. Business decision makers at Red Robin and Cowboy Red evaluated solutions by PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Epicor, Peachtree, QuickBooks, and Microsoft.

With guidance from CGTS, Cowboy Red and Red Robin Gourmet Burgers chose Microsoft® Business Solutions–Great Plains® software as the franchise’s new accounting system because of its ability to easily integrate data from MenuLink, its robust out-of-the-box functionality, its detailed reporting capability, and the overall value it provided for its price.

In September 2003, CGTS began implementing Microsoft Great Plains for all of Cowboy Red’s restaurants. Although the CGTS team was located in Denver—more than 1,000 miles away from the Cowboy Red restaurants in Texas—distance did not prove to be a barrier to the success of the project. CGTS completed most of the software configuration off-site by using remote desktop-sharing software. The last phase of the implementation, which included creating customer preferences and training, occurred on-site and took two and a half days. “I had heard from others that changing accounting programs could be extremely challenging; such as stories of companies experiencing lost information, and days or weeks of hair-pulling frustration,” says Jamie Lobb, Accounting Manager for Cowboy Red. “Working with CGTS on the Microsoft Great Plains conversion was much easier than I had anticipated. In just a few quick training sessions, I felt like I had been using Microsoft Great Plains forever.”

Benefits

Within the first month after deployment, Cowboy Red experienced a 20 percent increase in the accounting department’s productivity, eliminating the need to hire additional employees. The ease of use and efficiency with which reports can now be produced gives managers more time to analyze financial numbers and act on discrepancies before they turn into larger problems. Microsoft Great Plains easily integrates with other software, such as MenuLink, so Cowboy Red has been able to streamline business processes, thereby aiding in the franchisee’s expansion plans.

Increased Time Savings Improves Productivity by 20 Percent

Lobb estimates that Microsoft Great Plains saves her two days’ worth of time per week. Processes that previously had to be conducted manually, such as importing daily sales entries, inventory adjustments, paid-in and paid-out entries, and invoices, are now automated.

“Every month, I have to prepare reconciliations, a process in which the differences between the bank statements and the accounting system’s statements are reconciled,” says Lobb. “In the past, it took me two and a half to three days to prepare these reconciliations. With Microsoft Great Plains, it takes me only a day and a half to complete the reports.”

Because Cowboy Red is currently a small chain, Lobb works not only as an accounting manager, but also as a payroll and human resources assistant. Despite the franchisee’s plan to open two additional restaurants in the near future, with the time savings that Lobb has gained with the implementation of Microsoft Great Plains, she won’t need to hire an assistant. “Using the old system, I would have had to hire an assistant, because there just isn't enough time in a week to get all the necessary work done,” she says. “Because of the increased productivity we experience with Microsoft Great Plains, we won’t have to hire an assistant for a long time to come.”

Enhanced Reporting Helps Managers Quickly Identify Financial Discrepancies

With the help of Microsoft Great Plains, Lobb can easily run comparison reports, including comparisons of one restaurant to another, the Fort Worth restaurants to the Houston restaurants, and this year’s financial performance to last year’s performance. As Cowboy Red continues to expand its operations, this reporting functionality will serve as a great tool to compare future store openings to those of the past.

“The flexibility of Microsoft Great Plains reporting is an essential asset to our business,” says Lobb. “What is great about this reporting is that it takes information from each store and places it side by side. This helps the director of operations act more quickly if there is a high-cost issue in one of the restaurants.”

Flexibility and Ease of Use Produces Results for Novices and Professionals

For Cowboy Red, an attractive feature of Microsoft Great Plains was the fact that Lobb could pick and choose which accounting modules she wanted to have. The company already had a solution for inventory management, for instance, so to acquire a system with that module would have been a waste of money. “A lot of the systems I evaluated lacked what we were looking for or included more than we needed,” says Lobb. “You couldn’t pick and choose which modules within the system you wanted to use. With Microsoft Great Plains, you are only paying for what you need.”

Another attractive feature of Microsoft Great Plains is its ease of use. “Microsoft Great Plains is easy to use out of the box,” says Lobb. “It can produce great results for novices or professional accountants. I’ve had minimal accounting training, but Microsoft Great Plains is so intuitive that I’ve had no trouble understanding how it works.”

Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship

and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.

For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to:

dynamics

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| |Software and Services

■ Microsoft Dynamics

" Microsoft Business Solutions

■ For more information about Clifton Gunderson Technology Solutions products and services, call (888) 272-3476 or visit the Web site at:

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■ For more information about Red Robin Gourmet Burgers products and services, call (303) 846-6000 or visit the Web site at:

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■ “I’ve had minimal accounting training, but Microsoft Great Plains is so intuitive that I’ve had no trouble understanding how it works.”

■ Jamie Lobb, Accounting Manager, Cowboy Red

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■ “Microsoft Great Plains is easy to use out of the box. It can produce great results for novices or professional accountants.”

■ Jamie Lobb, Accounting Manager, Cowboy Red

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