Fast-food franchise chain gains an edge

The division has built a new sales and operational reporting system for the fast-food franchise chain and it now equips all 100 of the chain's stores, providing each of them with an accurate view of sales for every given week.

The system provides its head office management with current and historical weekly sales and operational information for all 100 stores nationwide.

“McDonald's South Africa can now view sales and operational information for any of its branches for any given week with a system that is lightning fast,” says Peter Moss, business development manager at Lightedge.

This solution therefore gives the franchise the capacity to support the expansion of its footprint in South Africa.

“McDonald's South Africa has constantly invested in its IT infrastructure for the capturing of data and associated management reporting tools, but its exponential growth in the local market and desire to achieve greater operational efficiency meant its old system could no longer handle the growing number of users and data resource requirements. It was really bulging at the seams by the time they came to us,” says Moss.

This required a platform that could seamlessly integrate with existing infrastructure and offer great flexibility for the evolution of the group's operations.

Applied Concepts' solution was an application built on the Microsoft .NET 2 framework and written using C# with MS SQL Server 2005 as the data repository. It uses service-orientated architecture to allow for extensibility, scalability and interoperability with future applications as well as for longevity of the solution. Online help and administration tools for system maintenance are also available as and when required by the franchise. Adoption of the new solution included migrating all historical data from the original system (introduced five years ago) to the new system with minimum change management on the franchise's side.