We combined our deep industry knowledge with our change management experience to ensure that the business was ready to adopt these new systems and ways of working quickly, minimising  any impact on business performance.

Challenge

• Our client was undertaking a large transformation programme  to support their 5-year vision
• The first major part of this implementation of Fourth’s Inventory Management and StarChef software across their eight restaurants, as well as supporting Finance and Delivery Management teams
• This project was strategically important for the business as it drove significant benefit within the Food and Restaurants division of the company, as well as being the first project to deliver as a part of the wider transformation

Approach

• This was a significant change to ways of working for impacted business users, as many of their existing processes were highly manual, using Excel and (in many cases) paper to complete business-critical tasks
• Because of the inefficiencies in previous ways of working, the Executive Head Chef walked the equivalent distance of London to Twickenham every day
• To successfully implement and embed this change, we adapted the CMG change methodology for large-scale transformation programme , tailoring it to the specific needs of the restaurants, who were the main customers of the system
• We implemented a flexible training and communications plan, hosting training sessions early in the morning and later in the day to suit the nature of shift work within the restaurants
• We adopted a “Train the Trainer” approach so that the Restaurant Managers and Head Chefs could train their teams in their own time
• Due to the nature of the environment, we also created largely paper-based communications material that we could display in the kitchens and other areas that the restaurant teams work
• We provided a strong post go-live support structure, including implementing a cross-functional Super User community amongst business users to ensure that any problems could be quickly resolved on a daily basis to suit the speed of service
• We implemented a comprehensive, yet simple to use, adoption tracking dashboard to give regular visibility of how well the system and new ways of working were embedding within the business

Outcome

• This was a particularly complex change due to the diverse nature of the business users impacted, which involved chefs, restaurant managers in various locations, a delivery management team and a regional office-based team from finance
• In spite of this, the system and new ways of working were deployed and rolled out successfully to time and on budget
• Due to the change approach employed, the system was also embedded quickly with the business minimising  any impact on performance. This was evidenced through strong adoption metrics, which saw 100% of orders correctly placed in the system and 99% of orders correctly receipted in the system just four weeks after go-live