Case Study 1: System Makeover Re-energizes Pizza Hut’s Sales and Productivity (April 2014)
As a leader in the highly competitive pizza market, Pizza Hut relies on finely tuned operational and financial control at its 650 branches across the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland. Pizza Hut has, over the past four years, made a thorough investigation of its in‐store systems for point‐of‐sale, stock management and information handling. The chain’s existing point‐of‐sale (POS) system, was showing signs of age, particularly in its ability to drive operational efficiency in stores as well as provide enterprise business intelligence and decision support. Pizza Hut management wanted a new solution to cope with the store daily business operation.
Pizza Hut management identify list of potential vendors and proceed to send out the Request For Proposal (RFP). A dozen different system vendors were approached, with 6‐7 shortlisted by the end of 2010. This highlighted two main contenders: a system already used by Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) chains in the United States; and the Restaurant Enterprise System from MICROS. “Making decision is not easy here as we prompt to invest a lot of money and other resources to make such new solution works. Therefore, lots of essential factors must be taken into account before such software purchase decision made,” commented Julian O’Neill, Director, Business Process and IT, Pizza Hut (UK). “Our feeling, after some pretty stringent testing, was that MICROS had the capability to develop what we needed more quickly and robustly. Their system fitted our organization nature and practice better,” O’Neill said.
In the middle of 2011, a MICROS system was installed at the busy Pizza Hut restaurant in the Lakeside Shopping Centre in Essex. This trial proved that MICROS could suit the business and was extended to a regional group of 11 stores by early 2012. By August 2012, all company‐owned home delivery stores had a MICROS system as well as all other...