craveable brands. is the largest Australian owned quick service restaurant operator, serving 150,000 customers a day at iconic restaurant brands Oporto, Red Rooster and Chicken Treat. Operating under a franchise model that spans the country, with over 560 restaurants from Darwin to Hobart, Perth to Sydney, and pretty much everywhere in between.
“We need a reliable and efficient partner”
The right restaurant IT systems play a crucial role in providing the great customer service for which the QSR brands are known, and in running an efficient and profitable business. Implementing those systems without impacting business operations is by no means an easy task, as Michael Schofield, the group Chief Information Officer, will be the first to tell you. “We have over 2000 point of sale systems” he says “and keeping them up to date and performing well is essential. But with so many sites, so widely spread, and only a small window of access time outside operational hours, my team simply can’t get to them all, so I need a reliable and efficient partner to help”.
“When I joined craveable brands.”, says Michael, “they were using several partner organisations, we needed a step change in regards to strategic partnering in order to obtain an uplift in quality, leadership and firepower to service our fast pace business”. Michael had worked with IMI during his 20 + years at McDonald’s Australia and has always been thoroughly impressed with the excellent job they did.
“One of our top priorities was to move to a new version of our Oracle Symphony POS software, to take advantage of some powerful new functions, but to do so, we first needed to upgrade the Windows operating system.”
Michael broke the work into several projects; the first was the Windows upgrade for Oporto and Red Rooster restaurants who were on up to date POS hardware, ready to take the OS upgrade. Michael entrusted the project to IMI, and he was not disappointed.
IMI developed upgrade processes, training and documentation and managed local resources to implement the on-site upgrades outside of trading hours. Michael particularly valued the fact that the IMI service included a process for escalation and resolution of any 1st, 2nd and 3rd level technical issues, so that his in-house team was not burdened with extra work.
The result was that craveable brands. could upgrade Symphony as planned, and they had a stable and robust platform that eliminated many inherent support issues, freeing up time within Michael’s team. That stable and supportable platform was also the key that will allow the entire business to implement their strategy for a standardised in restaurant EFTPOS payment solution. The success of the project confirmed to Michael that he had picked the right partner and he felt very comfortable engaging IMI for the next three projects.