IBM Unica keeps restaurant chain on fast track

Over the past 50 years, this hospitality group has realized impressive growth. Starting its business as a single restaurant, the group now operates over 75 restaurants in North America as well as one of the largest full-service restaurant chains in the tri-state area.

The secret to this group’s success has always been innovation, starting with its original recognition that fast cars and fast food are a natural fit. The company features a fun and friendly dining experience, serving good quality food at reasonable prices with attentive service in clean, family-oriented restaurants.

The challenges
This group’s goal is to grow sales and earnings every year. While the group’s recipe for success is simple, the marketing efforts that support these goals are anything but.

Their 12-member marketing department relies heavily on outside resources located across the United States. In the past, the company managed its marketing initiatives using Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel. They created spreadsheet timelines on a PC, and routed paper proofs by hand. It took hours to build or update timelines. And it took days to review creative work-in-process, especially when reviewers were off site.

Responsible for all of the company’s marketing programs, the Marketing Coordinator was tasked with bringing all of those disparate pieces together using the old model. She says, “You can’t imagine how inefficient our system was back then and what I had to do to get things done.”

The solution
The group was desperate for a system that could automate and streamline the company’s marketing operations. After viewing a demo of IBM® Marketing Operations OnDemand, IBM’s on-demand Marketing Resource Management (MRM) tool, the organization was instantly sold on the value. The key selling point was the product’s robust project management capabilities.

The group realized it could build timelines in minutes instead of hours, send task reminders automatically, and review work-in-process from anywhere, at any time. Better yet, more than one person could proof work simultaneously, which dramatically reduced the time necessary to complete a proofing cycle.

Given these capabilities, the Marketing Coordinator describes the decision to bring in IBM Marketing Operations OnDemand as “a no-brainer.” And it was fully operational and rolled out within three months of the first demo viewing.

Usage
Today the group uses the system for collaborative project management, proofing, and communications. The company has expanded its initial user base of 9 to 22 from a variety of departments and outside vendors. The group’s marketing staff reviews creative work online. Their agencies and other partners pull this feedback directly from the system, make revisions, and then post updated work back to IBM Marketing Operations OnDemand for review. Agencies use the system to route feedback to partners and receive media request forms.

The group also uses IBM Marketing Operations OnDemand to design and roll out all the company’s menus, including three updates per year and seasonal campaigns. Other uses include managing the creation of gift cards, proofing website pages, creating email marketing campaigns, and designing billboards and advertising in local newspapers.

IBM Marketing Operations OnDemand has become integral to all marketing operations. Anything that is printed or scheduled flows through the system. The group also relies on the solution to organize corporate marketing, neighborhood marketing and special community marketing events through the system’s Events Calendar.

The results
IBM Marketing Operations OnDemand manages thousands of projects every year. The Marketing Coordinator now performs the same work herself that previously took several people to do using the old system. This allows her department to take on more projects without adding headcount.

“The IBM Unica solution is amazing. So is the customer service— nothing short of exemplary,” she says. “It is invaluable. Without it, I could not do my job. It allows me to manage thousands of open tasks and hundreds of projects at the same time. I can communicate at the drop of a hat, and manage a very cumbersome eight-month timeline project from conception to delivery so smoothly there is barely a ripple.”

About IBM Unica solutions
IBM Unica products are innovative marketing solutions that turn your passion for marketing into business success. Our comprehensive approach to interactive marketing enables organizations worldwide to understand their customers and use that understanding to engage buyers in highly relevant, interactive dialogues across digital, social, and traditional marketing channels.

Recognized as a leading integrator of enterprise systems for multiple industries, we help organizations with a wide variety of projects, analyzing real-time information and returning measurable value to stakeholders. In addition, we provide worldwide support for a variety of industry-partner content, services and applications.

For more information
To learn more about IBM Unica products, please contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/software/info/unica.

Smarter Commerce: An integrated approach
IBM Unica products are part of the IBM Smarter Commerce initiative. Smarter Commerce is a unique approach that increases the value companies generate for their customers, partners and shareholders in a rapidly changing digital world. To learn more about Smarter Commerce, visit ibm.com/smarterplanet/commerce.