"BusinessObjects has become the single source of information for McDonald's in the UK. Restaurant managers can now quickly get the information they need and spend more time on the floor with staff and customers, helping McDonald's to retain its position as the world's best quick service restaurant."

McDonald's Measures and Manages Performance Success with Business Objects

Quality and consistency of product and service have underpinned the success of the McDonald's restaurant chain since its inception. To achieve this consistency, the company sets many Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), both quantitative and qualitative, to which its restaurants aim to comply.

McDonald's is using business intelligence from Business Objects (an initiative known internally as SEER), to provide rapid access to this information to enable proactive management and improved business understanding.

Fierce Competition

McDonald's is the leading provider of quick service food globally. In the UK, the company has 1,250 restaurants - around 500 of which are franchised operations. Competition is fierce in this market, re-emphasising the importance of consistent quality and the ability to meet KPIs that range from product yield and sales to cleanliness, restaurant quality and restaurant initiatives within the local community.

Traditional manual collation of restaurant information was resource intensive and the end of day's trading figures would typically not be received until noon the following day. This meant there was a delay in reacting to problem areas. Steve Tiley, Head of Management Information Systems at McDonald's UK, says, "Restaurant managers were spending too much time assessing performance information, especially at month end, and not enough on the shop floor with customers and staff."

BusinessObjects Delivers Information Visibility

As a result, McDonald's UK selected BusinessObjects™, as its integrated query, reporting, and analysis solution, to deliver information rapidly via an intranet. BusinessObjects accesses an Oracle database holding restaurant performance information to create a suite of reports overnight ranging from sales, profit and loss and business controls to customer contacts and Drive-Thru speed of service. This enables McDonalds to track, understand and manage business performance. "McDonald's corporate culture is built upon the measurement of product and service quality," says Tiley. "BusinessObjects is enabling the company to proactively manage restaurant performance, improve effectiveness, and introduce new measures such as basket analysis to enhance promotional activity."

Operational Efficiency

Rapid access to performance information is a key enabler in McDonald's goal to attain consistency of product, quality and service delivery. The performance of each restaurant is monitored by Operational Consultants who are responsible for the performance of up to ten restaurants, both company owned and franchises. Using BusinessObjects, both consultants and restaurant managers now have access to the previous day's restaurant information by 8am the following day. This is enabling them to target activity on problems or under-performance in a specific restaurant.

Information is also available in aggregate form for senior Operations management and McDonald's has aggregated BusinessObjects reports to produce a performance management scorecard for restaurants that incorporates all KPIs on a monthly and yearly basis.

The flexibility of BusinessObjects has enabled the company to focus on specific business areas, such as the performance of the Drive-Thru outlets. Tiley says, "McDonald's has a goal of achieving 51% of sales through the Drive-Thru window at these outlets and colour coded BusinessObjects reports highlight restaurants failing to meet the 90-100 second serve-time objective."

Furthermore, by providing restaurants with a fast and easy to use system, the company's Accounts department has reduced the time spent during the month-end process by 500 man-hours each month. In addition, area restaurant managers now spend less time collecting information and more time concentrating on customer service.

By removing manual processes, BusinessObjects has provided McDonald's with a return on investment within nine months.

Achieving Excellent Customer Service

Targeted management has underpinned significant improvements in customer contacts. McDonald's has a goal of no more than two complaints per restaurant per month. Using BusinessObjects to highlight problems early, such as staffing levels, some 500 stores have achieved zero complaints for more than two consecutive months.

This focus on customer service is enhanced by information from the three "Mystery Shopper" visits to each restaurant monthly. This qualitative information, reported via BusinessObjects, includes, amongst other criteria, whether or not there was a friendly greeting, whether the server was wearing a name badge, as well as the overall cleanliness of the restaurant.

Promotional Improvements

With increasing competition and price sensitivity, it is essential that new promotions are proactively managed to maximise not only the sales of promoted goods but to ensure the sales of other products do not suffer - while meeting evolving customer requirements. McDonald's has recently started to use BusinessObjects for basket analysis reports which will be used by Marketing to assess the impact of promotions on other menu items to minimise product trade off and maximise sales potential. This information will, for the first time, provide the company with exact information to drive its promotional activity.

Global Impact

BusinessObjects is now being extended from 1,000 users in company owned restaurants and McDonald's Operations to both franchised restaurants via a secure extranet and to Head Office staff. In addition, the system has been rolled out to McDonald's Europe and has attracted interest from the Global Business Research Team in the US.

"BusinessObjects has become the single source of information for McDonald's in the UK," Tiley concludes. "Restaurant managers can now quickly get the information they need and spend more time on the floor with staff and customers, helping McDonald's to retain its position as the world's best quick service restaurant."