Bay Restaurant Group: Measuring performance with an IBM Cognos solution

Bay Restaurant Group is the fourth-largest casual dining operator in the UK, with three industry-leading restaurant brands – La Tasca, Slug and Lettuce and Ha Ha Bar & Grill. A second company, the Town and City Pub Company, operates 161 high street bars, mostly branded as Yates’.

Challenges faced
The Bay Restaurant Group needed to introduce technology that would analyse the performance of individual outlets, and assess sales trends throughout the group. The company also wanted to use the data to manage staffing levels, and analyse the success of promotions to continue to drive the business forward. “We wanted to introduce one system for all users and for all data,” says Hazell West, Head of IT at Bay Restaurant Group. “The technology needed to bring together information from a variety of areas. We wanted to hook up our reporting databases, which included IBM Cognos PowerPlay models based on data from the finance system and EPoS provider, and various Microsoft® SQL Server® databases, to help interpret data.”

As well as bringing together information from different data sources in one reporting location, the company also wanted one point of access for all users and a simple reporting tool for operations managers with the capacity to drill down to appropriate reports quickly and easily.

Strategy followed
The group worked with consultancy change++ to find a suitable solution for its business needs. change++ has over a decade’s experience of working with major organisations in the hospitality sector. The company’s independence enables it to help select the best software solutions available from major vendors. change++ presented the technology options available to the group and assisted Bay in its final decision.

After evaluating technology from several vendors, the bar and restaurant group opted for IBM Cognos 8 BI technology. The IBM Cognos system met the organisation’s needs best, as it can combine information from the whole company and deliver an immediate, personalised view of business performance to managers.

Bay was able to implement the reporting technology quickly and, following a successful pilot over a 6-week period conducted by two or three managers, was able to move to a live system in under two months.

Benefits realised
With the IBM Cognos solution, the group’s operations managers are now able to access all the data required to understand the performance of outlets within their territory, and how their area is performing compared to others. This also helps drive accountability through to the area managers.

The dashboard-style data displays provide information quickly, and allow users to analyse performance over a number of areas, including sales and wages, top five and bottom five performing bars, and sales trends graphs. The sales per square foot reports are colour-coded by session and day for each outlet so management can assess performance quickly.

With the IBM Cognos technology, the group can create ad-hoc reports, particularly to monitor sales data. “Operations managers like to be able to analyse sales by session over a period of time,” says West. “This allows them to compare performance for sessions in the bars and restaurants that they are In an effort to monitor performance, the company is measuring the effectiveness of special offers through a specifically designed promotions model. Sales can be monitored both pre- and post-promotions, and their performance can also be analysed against non-promotion products. This capability allows managers to identify the level of customer interest quickly and decide whether to extend the promotion to other areas or change it to achieve better results.

“The use of IBM Cognos software for this project was central to its success,” says West. “The IBM Cognos 8 BI solution used for Bay’s performance reporting effectively sits as a layer on top of other systems and allows data to be drawn from a number of sources. This avoids the need for data marts or warehouses and accelerates the development process, and also allows the group to source information regarding performance quickly.”

Initially, the departments using the technology include operations managers, finance, marketing, product and purchasing. But there are plans to roll it out to other areas of the business as necessary. Looking to the future, the group hopes to use the technology to help manage stocks and analyse machine information. “The rankings of sales by session for every outlet in all areas fosters healthy competition throughout the business and will help drive further improvement,” concludes West.

About IBM Cognos BI and Performance Management
IBM Cognos business intelligence (BI) and performance management solutions deliver world-leading enterprise planning, consolidation and BI software, support and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance. IBM Cognos solutions bring together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers an open, adaptive and complete performance solution. Over 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries around the world choose IBM Cognos solutions.