Devyani International Ltd Retail Company Automates Processes, Integrates Operations with new Business Solution

Established in 1991, Delhi based Devyani International Ltd. is an Indian franchisee of KFC and Pizza Hut chain of restaurants in agreement with Yum! Brands and UK's Costa Coffee chain. However, with a total of 130 outlets, the challenges of performing accounting, billing and reporting activities along with point-of-sales terminal management increased. With disparate systems and unconnected point-of-sales terminals the company struggled with manual processes that required extra man power and introduced inaccuracies. To address these challenges, it worked with Trident Information Systems, a Microsoft® Certified Partner, to implement an end-to-end POS retail solution based on LS Retail 5.0 built on Microsoft® Dynamics™ NAV 4.0 with Service Pack 3. The solution at DIL manages all the aspects of sales related business from point-of-sale to back-office management including promotional and discount schemes. It streamlines operations and supports growth in the retail business. With all the point-of-sale terminals and stores integrated with the head office, the solution saves huge person-hours resulting in reduced administrative costs.

Founded in 1991, Devyani International Limited (DIL) is an associate company of RJ Corporation, a diversified conglomerate, which engages in beverages, fast foods, retail, real estate, healthcare, and education businesses in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Based in New Delhi, India, DIL is the food service arm of the group and is uniquely placed with a portfolio of 3 international brands in the quick service restaurant space. It is the Indian franchisee of global food retail chains Pizza Hut and KFC (both from Yum! Brands) and Costa Coffee (a coffee house company based in the UK).

With total employee strength of 3200 personnel, DIL owns and operates 70 Pizza Hut outlets, 11 KFC restaurants and 49 Costa Coffee stores. DIL has also inked a joint venture with GMR Group, to set up multiple food retail outlets at the Delhi Domestic and International Airport. Its first food court is already operational at the Domestic Airport, Delhi, under the banner ‘Food Street’. The company has recently ventured into the Institutional Catering business as well.

However, there was a downside to this impressive growth. The company did not use any structured solution to manage the point-of-sales (POS) based system at its retail outlets or at the head-office. Old legacy POS systems were being in use for billing sales which did not consolidate data. Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets were used for compiling all these sales data of all locations. Excel spreadsheets were used not only for accounting purposes, but also for generating financial balance sheets at the head office. Diverse systems add to data integrity issues and manual data re-entry. In the absence of an automated environment, all outlets acted as separate entities. Carrying out critical functions including communication, compilation and replication of data among all outlets and the head office was an impossible task. Data had to be collected manually every month from each location and taken to the head office for consolidation, which took days to structure. Apart from being a time consuming activity, manual re-entry of data required more man-power and often resulted in inaccuracies along with higher administrative cost.

Moreover, due to lack of an integrated system, the ever-changing promotional and discount schemes offered by the company had to be manually installed at every retail outlet across the country. The activity required more staff and time and was repeated as many times as the new schemes were launched.

The company lacked a systematic procedure to carry out an item level or product level analysis, implement and monitor new promotion schemes, check the performance of each product on the basis of high or low selling products and promote them accordingly.

DIL knew that disparate, standalone systems could no longer meet its requirements. Hence, it decided to update its infrastructure and processes to support the continual growth process. The company sought a solution to take care of best practices and data consolidations at the head office, handle billing of all stores, manage multiple POS terminals, supervise stocks and store-wise profitability, define promotional offers and schemes, as well as provide online information.

To manage the diverse needs of retail industry, DIL considered various alternative solutions. However, after detailed evaluation, it finally opted to use a POS retail solution from Microsoft - LS Retail 5.0 built on Microsoft® Dynamics™ NAV 4.0 with Service Pack 3.

“LS Retail NAV is a flexible POS based solution that can be configured according to our requirements and maintains common data at all outlets,” says Sukesh Gera, Head-Information Technology and Systems, DIL. “Since the POS terminals, back office and head office, all use the same application and functionalities; the individual transactions are directly tracked from the head office.”

The Sales reports along with tax calculations are generated on a daily basis for all stores and are replicated in the head office in 30-40 minutes. Earlier this exercise took days with lot of man-power to manually combine data from separate systems and then calculate sales figures each month. Sukesh Gera Head – Information Technology and Systems, Devyani International Ltd

The application has integrated all outlets with the head office. Staff is more efficient and can quickly attend to customer requirements. Additionally, administrative staff is able to complete days work in few hours and the management can simultaneously keep a tab on all outlets and working of employees. Overall, the solution has enhanced efficiency in operational practices as well as profitability.

As operations at Pizza Hut outlets differ from other hospitality chain businesses, specific customizations were carried out to fulfill its requirements. Pizza Hut provides various offers and multiple promotion schemes that keep varying on a monthly basis. The solution is thus tailored to accommodate features like pricing for combining multiple products with discount schemes, capturing promotions, and delivery specific customizations. The company immensely benefits from these additional features because every new scheme, promotion, discount or rate change is simultaneously reflected in all stores across the country. Now, the Pizza Hut call centre set up to manage the 25 Pizza Hut outlets in the residential area of Delhi and NCR for home delivery service, manages all its operations and communications with the stores through this LS Retail NAV solution.

Though complete inventory management is not yet handled by the solution, but to curtail wastage and save cost, it was customized to monitor and maintain the inventory of raw materials , ideal and actual consumption and track the quantity of left-over food and hence minimize wastage. Besides, few minor customizations were done for operation excellence and better visuals.

“Scalability and customization abilities of LS Retail NAV are ideal for our retail environment for it efficiently manages all POS terminals which can be increased as per future requirements,” states Sukesh Gera, Head – Information Technology and Systems, DIL. “The back office operations automates data reconciliation from all the outlets at the head office. Moreover, it ensures total data and system integrity.”

By implementing the new solution, DIL now has a business management software that controls processes from store to head office level and vice-versa. It stores sales information for analysis and reporting purposes and also follows sales trends. Furthermore, it is easy to use, ensures good connectivity and consistent operating speed, is rich in features, is reliable and most of all is cost effective.

Using LS Retail NAV, DIL enjoys seamless POS integration with its back-end system. All POS terminals are integrated with the head office. Any transaction from any POS is automatically routed to the head office and gathered in a centralized system for reconciliation. This eliminates the task of manual data re-entry from POS terminal across multiple systems and spreadsheets.

The company is now able to roll out standardized international practices based on set parameters across all stores and is thus assured of high standards and customer satisfaction. The head office monitors all the stores, discounts and various promotion schemes offered and can block the offers simultaneously in all the outlets, if required. “The solution provides valuable real-time visibility across all outlets,” says Sukesh Gera, Head – Information Technology and Systems, DIL. “With a single view of business-critical information, we can now improve our operations.”

The integration of all locations has resulted in accurate information and reporting. With the help of the solution, transactions from 130 odd stores are recorded in a central system. “The Sales reports along with tax calculations are generated on a daily basis for all stores and are replicated in the head office in 30-40 minutes. Earlier this exercise took days with lot of man-power to manually combine data from separate systems and then calculate sales figures each month,” explains Sukesh Gera, Head – Information Technology and Systems, DIL.

Simultaneously, a copy of each report is sent to the IT department for records. With automated workflow, the company is able to maintain detailed records, high working standards, efficiency and thus saves extensive person-days which results in reduced administrative costs.

Fast and easy POS operations improves customers’ service time and has more control on cash flow. LS Retail NAV provides transparency of retail operations, which has a direct impact on sales. For example, it offers best practices to keep a check on delivery performance of home delivery orders. Based upon time of order and dispatch, average delivery time of an order is calculated. Now, with the availability of real time data for analysis, DIL has succeeded in reducing delivery time. It thus enhances the customers’ satisfaction and helps to retain them. Customers’ loyalty adds volumes to business.

Based on customers’ liking, DIL launches new promotion schemes and discounts very frequently, which results in changes in the price catalogue. In addition, new products are added every 2-3 months. Earlier, to bring these changes to effect, a person had to physically visit each store to update the new changes which took around 4 days at each location. However, now with automatic processes, unnecessary manual tasks have been eliminated. “After the implementation LS Retail NAV, the changes are rolled out within 2-3 hours from the head office and replicated in all stores across the country. The financial impact of this feature is incremental sale of 6 days,” states Sukesh Gera, Head – Information Technology and Systems, DIL.

Now that the business data is available from 130 different stores for reporting and analysis in a single repository, DIL has enhanced insight into operations. With comprehensive business intelligence functionality, data is easily reviewed, analyzed and converted to useful information for future use. Finally, employees at all levels of the company have a complete view of the business to support efficient processes and rapid and accurate decision making in a fast-paced business environment.

DIL uses 6-7 marketing channels like e-coupons, SMS campaigns, leaflets, e-mails etc. With centralized channel tracking system based on scientific data; the company can decide on the most apt, beneficial and efficient marketing channel for customer retention and can use it more aggressively.

The solution helps drive higher margins by streamlining order processing and tracking. It also reduces paperwork and optimizes efficiency. Sukesh Gera, Head – Information Technology and Systems, DIL concludes, “Now we can run daily sales reports with all operational and financial data. The reports are detailed and we can pinpoint fast or slow moving products in addition to profitable or non-profitable products with ease. With such accurate data analysis, we can target appropriate market with various promotional and discount schemes to generate more revenue.”

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 that 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:

www.microsoft.com/dynamics

Trident Information Systems Pvt. Ltd. was started in 1997 and is a part of well-established Bharat Industrial Works Group. Trident offers a broad portfolio of services and technologies needed to deliver the benefits of information management to its

customers. The company focuses on long-term relationship with the customers by providing high quality, contemporary and cost effective Software Development and IT consulting services. It delivers wide-ranging and value added services adopting the unique approach of integrating people, processes and technology. This approach has allowed mapping business requirements to the technology solution that fit project goals. It focuses on understanding customer needs to devise design and development strategies to efficiently create reliable applications, on time and within budget.

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local sMicrosoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com

For more information about Devyani International products and services, call (91)(124) (4643100 )

For more information about Trident Information Systems products and services, call (91) (11) (2921 9927) or visit the Web site at: www.tridentinfo.com