Working in partnership Tahola and CDG increase demand for data throughout the organisation to inform critical decision making.

Casual Dining Group is one of the largest independent restaurant companies in the UK. They operate some of the most recognisable and loved restaurant brands to be found anywhere in the eating-out market, such as Bella Italia, Café Rouge, La Tasca and Las Iguanas.

They operate almost 300 restaurant sites in a variety of locations including leisure parks, shopping centres, airports and high streets. They are a national business, with restaurants located across the country - from Aberdeen to Plymouth - employing more than 7,000 people and serving more than 20 million meals each year.

In addition to their UK operations, they are also looking for opportunities to selectively expand Casual Dining Group internationally, through franchise partnerships. As a result they recently opened their first restaurants in Dubai and in India.

In 2015 the new CDG management team set the Systems team a challenge to replace outdated and largely manual reporting processes with a unified set of management reports utilising a single underlying data set. These management reports were needed to drive improvements in targeting customer promotions and increase footfall in shoulder periods.

CDG engaged Tahola to assist with this specific project as the two organisations had been working successfully together for a number of years. Tahola provided the required tools, techniques and analysis of the underlying data, that forms the basis of the reports developed using Qlik technology and implemented by Tahola.

CDG and Tahola worked together to design a dashboard that would display KPI’s to support the business in maintaining its market position. Up until this time, data analysis at CDG was predominantly based around manual processes and no single version of the truth existed. There were many complex interfaces between multiple systems.

The aim of the project was clear from the outset, there was a requirement for a series of dashboards that would provide business insight into restaurant performance, there was also a need to roll these up into area and company views. It was essential that the project deliverables were easy to understand at all levels, from restaurant general managers to the C-level management team.

Data was interfaced from a number of sources including point of sale transactions, time and attendance, purchasing and third-party data. Reconciliation with existing systems took time, however getting this right ensured the operations team had confidence in the reports and a view of the data became available at restaurant, area manager, operations, brand and company views.

An agile project management methodology was used to expedite delivery of elements of the solution. Periodic reports were provided for approval prior to distribution and the distribution of daily and weekly reports were automated. An online tool was also provided by Tahola, this enabled staff to perform a deeper dive into the data to gain a greater insight.

Standardisation of reports and accuracy of data drove uptake and rapidly the project deliverables became an essential part of the operational managers day.

Promotional activity is driven by accurate insight and is able to target specific restaurants, area or trading period. Top-line revenue, labour cost and cost of goods can be quickly reviewed and corrective action can be taken.

There is now an increased demand for data throughout CDG to inform critical decision making.

For further information please contact:

Leigh Baillie

Marketing & Communications Director

Tahola Ltd

Leigh.Baillie@Tahola.com

+44 7894 517828