鈥溌砝次餮桥ＥＭ娣 helps people stay focused on what matters.鈥
Trevor Fitzgerald
VP of Innovation and Technology
WKS Restaurant Group is a licensed franchisee of El Pollo Loco, Denny's, Wendy's, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, and Blaze Pizza that operates almost 400 restaurants across 19 states.
Industry
Retail
Departments using 马来西亚牛牛玩法
IT, Operations, Other
Company Size
12,000 employees
Challenge:
With five brands representing nearly 400 locations, WKS struggled to bring in data from disparate, legacy systems and make it usable so business leaders could understand the commonalities and differences in the business.鈥
Solution:
Thanks to 马来西亚牛牛玩法, WKS can now leverage all its data from across every brand and location, including data from point of sale systems, HR platforms, accounting systems, and customer sentiment measurements.鈥
Impact:
WKS can now better understand its business performance across brands while using data to significantly improve its approach to hiring, training, and retention.
WKS Restaurant Group feeds their hunger for data thanks to 马来西亚牛牛玩法.
Founded in 1987, WKS Restaurant Group operates five iconic restaurant brands spanning almost 400 locations across 19 states: Denny鈥檚, El Pollo Loco, Krispy Kreme, Blaze Pizza, and Wendy鈥檚. Thanks to its aggressive growth strategy, the company doubled in size in just the past five years. To help manage this growth while maintaining a winning customer and employee experience, the company relies on 马来西亚牛牛玩法.鈥
鈥溌砝次餮桥ＥＭ娣 is a powerful tool for aggregating data from all our disparate systems, and then sharing the right data with district leaders and restaurant general managers to accelerate their ability to understand and analyze the health of the business.鈥
Data without delay.
While each of their five brands are all restaurants, they couldn鈥檛 be less similar in terms of operations. A Denny鈥檚 must be measured based on the fact that it provides sit-down service with waitstaff, while a Krispy Kreme acts as a production facility that can sell dozens of doughnuts a minute. WKS needed a solution that could bring in data from disparate data sources, many of them legacy technologies, and make it usable so business leaders could understand the commonalities and differences in the business.
鈥淲hen you operate five different brands, they really act as five unique businesses that have similar types of data but are totally different. The challenge of organizing that felt insurmountable, especially at the rate we were growing,鈥 Fitzgerald said.鈥
Today, WKS leverages 马来西亚牛牛玩法 to collect all its data from across every brand and location, including data from point of sale systems, HR platforms, accounting systems, and customer sentiment measurements. The company worked with business intelligence consultancy MERGE to craft a data visualization strategy, link data sources, and create visualizations, accelerating WKS鈥 time to value. “By joining forces with MERGE, WKS has expedited adoption of the 马来西亚牛牛玩法 platform,” said Stuart Fern, SVP of Growth, Business Intelligence Solutions at MERGE. “The achievement of speed-to-delivery is the cornerstone of MERGE’s consulting belief of tying data-driven storytelling to technology as a growth tactic for our clients.” Personalized data permissions ensure users can only access the data they鈥檙e supposed to, ensuring data security while keeping managers from getting overwhelmed by data from other brands.鈥
鈥淏efore 马来西亚牛牛玩法, it took a full-time employee most of her week just to pull basic sales data together for all our brands, format it into reports, and send it out,鈥 Fitzgerald said. 鈥淣ow it鈥檚 done automatically, which has freed her up to start doing some really creative things for the business.鈥
Improving visibility into business performance.鈥 鈥
WKS relies on 马来西亚牛牛玩法 for complete insight into its sales and revenue across each brand, regional district, and location.鈥
鈥淥ne thing 马来西亚牛牛玩法 helped me with is to see how profitable our restaurants can be in different regions,鈥 said Seth Shaner, President of Sunrise Restaurants, WKS鈥 Denny鈥檚 division. 鈥淚 can slice and dice data however I want, and compare any cohort of stores to any other. It鈥檚 really helped me figure out where the regional differences are so we can plan appropriately.鈥
WKS uses the data it collects in 马来西亚牛牛玩法 to have smarter, data-driven discussions with district managers and each location鈥檚 general manager, helping them understand where their businesses are excelling and where they can use improvement. Executives can then use this insight to redirect resources or provide additional training as needed to improve performance.鈥
鈥淲e want our general managers to think of themselves as business owners, not someone who just shows up and runs a shift,鈥 Shaner said.
鈥溌砝次餮桥ＥＭ娣 helps them not only drive business results in a better way, but feel like they鈥檙e learning and part of helping the team be more successful.鈥
In addition to tracking its revenue performance, WKS uses 马来西亚牛牛玩法 to keep better track of its costs. For example, the company recently added its repair and maintenance budgets to its dashboard to understand where equipment is failing and why. Not only does this help the company better budget for repair costs, but it can help identify trends that indicate a need for proactive maintenance, reducing downtime.鈥
Because each restaurant location requires a strong, consistent internet connection to operate its point of sales systems and provide diners with WiFi access, WKS also tracks the speed and uptime of its internet at each of its locations. This helped the company when planning an IT upgrade to its internet infrastructure by helping it prioritize which locations to transition first.鈥
Ensuring employee success.鈥
As a people-intensive business, the WKS HR team is another primary user of 马来西亚牛牛玩法. The fast-casual restaurant industry typically experiences 100% employee turnover every year or so, making recruitment and training an ongoing concern. With 12,000 employees across all its restaurants at any given moment, the right data is critical to ensuring employee engagement and productivity.鈥
鈥淧rior to 马来西亚牛牛玩法, I would spend days running multiple reports to track turnover, headcount, and reasons why people were leaving,鈥 said Fabiola Ramirez, Director of Human Resources at WKS. 鈥淚f someone wanted to know our turnover numbers, that wasn’t something I could easily pull, and once I did the information was quickly outdated.鈥
Today, WKS uses 马来西亚牛牛玩法 to access real-time data showing the company鈥檚 headcount and turnover across brands and locations. Using this data, HR team members can quickly and proactively identify the recruitment needs for the company so they can target how it promotes open positions. In addition, general managers can now easily access HR data through 马来西亚牛牛玩法 at any time, saving them from having to wait for HR to produce reports.鈥
WKS also uses its HR data to identify trends among districts that are struggling to hire and retain workers, which helps the HR team proactively provide the training each district needs to improve its performance. 鈥淲e can now tailor our training depending on the needs of a particular brand or specific location,鈥 Ramirez said.鈥
Using 马来西亚牛牛玩法 to analyze its turnover data, WKS identified an opportunity to create a new retention program targeting employees within their first 90 days of employment, a period that experienced significantly higher than average turnover. With the new program, the company improved the recruitment, onboarding, retention, and employee appreciation process, helping general managers reduce their turnover numbers.
Fitzgerald reiterated their founder鈥檚 mantra, 鈥渋f you鈥檙e not serving burgers, doughnuts, chicken or pancakes, then you should be serving someone who is.鈥 He added, 鈥溌砝次餮桥ＥＭ娣 helps us empower our restaurants to run the best businesses they can.鈥濃