Scaling Quick-Service Restaurants with Automation

How to Scale Quick-Service Restaurants Video Transcript

James Bodenstedt, President & CEO at MUY! Companies: We operate about 780 restaurants across Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut with revenues right at a billion dollars.

Well, I’ve always appreciated the way that OneDataSource listened to us and tried to meet our needs or exceed our needs with the different products that they have – amending things based on our requests or requirements. We’ve been able to tailor-make the product for ours and other customers’ needs and have that really help enhance the way that we look at data. I think it’s really been a value add to us over time on how we dissect the data, how our team’s able to dissect the data and make decisions based on it.

One of the things I really like about oneVIEW is that when I had looked at other business intelligence platforms, other data providers, none of them were able to aggregate all the different brands together but OneDataSource allows me to look at my level all of my businesses in one piece of paper. Instead of having to go to different places to see my different brands, they can aggregate it, and that’s pretty unusual in this business – to be able to aggregate all that business data from different brands, different databases into one picture that I can look at as the owner.

I think one of the biggest things that oneVIEW gives us is the ability to tailor-make things for our leaders. So, whether it’s Pizza Hut or Taco Bell or Wendy’s, we look at metrics in somewhat different ways based on that brand – whether it’s a drive-thru oriented business or a delivery order business in that case – and what oneVIEW has done and OneDataSource has done for us with oneVIEW is take that data and dissect it in a way that gives us back better information to make decisions down to the manager level. Our district managers share that information with our restaurant general managers, and we use that to look at the performance from the day before and make business decisions based on what we’re going to do going forward.

I think the biggest benefit we’ve received from onePAY is insight into our invoices. At any moment that we need to, we can drill down and see that. We’ve gotten our folks doing electronic approvals, so we know who’s approved the invoices and when they’ve done that.

Then lastly, we’ve become more accurate and efficient at it. When what we used to do is hand key in thousands tens of thousands of invoices. Now, they’re done electronically so our rate of accuracy is at the 99 point something level of accuracy – where I would have guessed we had probably five or ten percent of times mistakes. Those mistakes can sometimes cost us thousands or tens of thousands of dollars if we put in an extra zero or fail to put in a zero. So, the idea that we’ve become more accurate, and there’s more transparency in what we’re doing. I love that!

We’ve gone from having the need in our size business of around 15 accounts payable people to three. So, it’s three people that potentially could even make mistake – not 15 – so take the multiple of that down, but then it’s all done electronically so the mistakes are really not existent.

Well, the way loss prevention has been helped by either onePAY or oneVIEW is within oneVIEW, there are triggers that are done. So, there are parameters that we’ve set with either transactions or deletions or over rings and things like that, that are done on a loss prevention basis that are triggers that give us an alert to tell us hey this is something you ought to pay attention to. 

So, instead of a district manager having to pour through different documents or even just a report, there are these alerts that tell us that there’s a problem that we need to be identified. We set the parameters. We choose what that alert is going to be triggered by. That’s really helpful in oneVIEW.

As far as onePAY, it’s really the accuracy. The paying everything properly. Then being able to go back and do database searches because now all these items are electronically in your databases. We can compare the same kind of work by different vendors. We can also compare the same work by the same vendors and look for discrepancies with what they’re trying to charge us either from a location or from job to job. Super for that!

The things we can do now with OneDataSource that we probably couldn’t have done 15 years ago, or maybe even with other companies that provide the same service, is twofold…

Firstly, we’re able to customize anything we want, and tailor-make it for what we want, the way we do it. This is especially helpful owning multiple brands because those needs and requirements are sometimes different.

The second thing it’s done is give us a mindset of how we can use this data to our advantage. I’m sure we’re not even fully utilizing everything we could today. The idea of that to me is, as an owner I guess disappointing that we’re probably not, but happy that there are things that we can do to be better.

I think the thing I most appreciate is the fact that they listen to us and improve the product over time. Since we’ve been involved with them for 15 years, they’ve made constant improvements year-over-year, month-over-month – whatever we need to do.

We come up with an idea of, “Hey, we’d like to see this can you do this,” and the answer is let’s figure out how to do it for you – not we don’t do it. I very rarely ever hear that something can’t be done, but I mostly hear “yeah, we’ll do that. we’ll get right back to you on how we can do that.”

So, I appreciate the fact that they’ve always listened to the things we need to do differently. This business does change. We look at things in a different way, or we have something that comes out whether it’s credit cards…you know we didn’t have credit cards 20 years ago, but now I’ve got a nice robust report that shows me the trend on credit cards. How things are doing on credit cards. The approval rates on credit cards I’ve got all that kind of stuff I had, but I didn’t even need or know I needed 15 years ago.