The Business
This case study is about digitisation work that Clockwork undertook in a Cloud Kitchen business.
The Business is a Bangalore, India, headquartered Cloud Kitchen business that produces and supplies various ready to eat dishes and semi-finished food items to,
- Its own dine-in-restaurants based in different parts of Bangalore, India;
- Institutional food outlets like messes in educational institutes, business parks, food courts etc; and
- Events, concerts and exhibitions.
Business Challenges
The Business, given the variety of consumption points and the geographical spread, had certain challenges that were to be addressed through the digitisation initiative, viz.,:
- Assistance in effective Menu Planning across all their outlets and dine-in-restaurants.
- Capacity Planning.
- Inventory Planning and control.
- Pilferage / Wastage control.
- Visibility across several parameters.
Solution Offered
The Solution that was offered by Clockwork was a combination of the following with SAP Business One at the core and the data as a ‘single source of truth’ being maintained in SAP Business One ERP:
- SAP Business One HANA 10.X
- Clockwork’s Bolt-on Solutions for Menu Planning (based on outlet specific calendar, previous consumption pattern, seasonality etc), Average Consumption Calculation, Allocation / Transfer of dishes / food items between outlets, common pool cost apportionment across outlets, traceability etc.
- ‘Point of Sale’ (PoS) Integration with SAP Business One at restaurant outlets.
- Clockwork’s Mobile Apps for achieving transport fleet efficiency, Route Mapping.
- Indenting Portal for placing Food Items / Material requests by outlets.
- Barcode solution for certain processes.
Outcome / Business Benefits
- Effective menu planning (rule based so as to avoid repetition of menu / rejuvenate the menu to keep it fashionable).
- Supporting “Today Special Menu” effectively based on rules.
- Realtime food items / inventory visibility across outlets so that effective reallocation could be done to avoid stock-out situation / wastage.
- Effective outlet specific costing of food items.
- Avoidance of ‘stock out of dishes / food items’ at outlets.
- Timely availability of raw material / food ingredients at the cloud kitchen.
- Substantial reduction in food wastage / pilferage as solution offered visibility as regards location specific loss of billing
- Better Inventory Management, Visibility and Control leading to cost reduction
Conclusion
Clockwork’s solution addressed the challenges faced by the business effectively by helping the business in outlet specific menu planning, in avoiding ‘stock-out’ situation, by ensuring timely availability of food items at the outlets, ensuring reduction in wastage / pilferage, by optimising inventory holding and as a result the initiative led to overall RoI improvement for the business