Published on 02 Nov 2010
Customer:
McCormick and Schmick’s Restaurants
Industry:
Retail
Deployment country:
United States
Solution:
Business Intelligence, Smarter Analytics
Business partner:
eCapital Advisors
Overview
The IBM Cognos Express solution was chosen because of the simplicity of its installation and intuitive end-user interface.
Business need:
Previously relying on spreadsheets containing historic information, McCormick & Schmick’s needed a unified and comprehensive view of financial performance.
Solution:
The company implemented IBM Cognos Express to create a set of automated dashboards that integrated both GL and POS data from the company’s individual stores. This helps them drive better decisions based on more complete and current information.
Benefits:
Ease and speed of implementation meant users were creating reports and using dashboards within just one month; the powerful IBM Cognos Express OLAP analytical engine allowed McCormick and Schmick’s to integrate and consolidate general ledger and point-of-sale (POS) data; better visibility helps executives and store managers quickly recognizeand act upon key business trends.
Case Study
McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants, Inc. is a leading national seafood restaurant operator in the affordable upscale dining segment. Over the past 35 years, they have successfully grown their business by focusing on serving a broad selection of fresh seafood. With nearly 100 locations in the US and Canada, McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants focus on providing guests with an unparalleled dining experience and tailoring the freshest seafood selections available to local and regional tastes.
In the highly competitive restaurant market, McCormick & Schmick’s needed to understand and respond to dining trends in real time.
Challenges faced
The challenge for McCormick & Schmick’s was even though the stores shared a consistent restaurant model, they operated as autonomous entities with individual and daily changing menus. It was extremely difficult to compare and understand current and historical sales as well as other key business drivers. Their previous method for business analysis required gathering data from disparate systems and consolidating it into a 70-page Microsoft™ Excel document.
Strategy followed
Within 30 days, IBM® partner eCapital implemented IBM Cognos® Express to create a set of automated dashboards that integrated both GL and POS data from each store. Every night data from the POS systems automatically update management dashboards allowing key personnel to quickly analyze current and historical data at an enterprise and store level. It also provides drill-down visibility into daily restaurant sales, traffic patterns and expenses.
Benefits realized
This visibility is allowing McCormick & Schmick’s executives, as well as individual general managers, to quickly recognize trends to key business drivers and give them the information they need to make the most informed decisions about their business on a daily basis. The migration of sales reporting to IBM Cognos Express produces both efficiency and reliability of the data distributed by finance. The automation of this task has freed 40 analyst work hours a month—time that is now used to concentrate on analysis rather than spreadsheet maintenance.
About eCapital Advisors
eCapital Advisors LLC, headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, is a management consulting firm specializing in Business Analytics solutions. These solutions include software and services designed to empower the business user with real-time budgeting, Forecasting, analytics and reporting. These powerful tools provide comprehensive, real-time views of performance that facilitate decision-making to improve efficiency and increase profitability.
eCapital Advisors has IBM Cognos certified professionals on staff, that represent over 200 years of consulting and industry experience. The primary industries eCapital Advisors has been engaged in are Manufacturing, Health Care and Retail. We have also done work in the Higher Education, Financial Services and Energy.
Using the proprietary eCapital Advisors Methodology, consultants quickly assess, design and implement Enterprise Planning and Business Intelligence solutions. eCapital Advisors has a continuously growing client base of over 100 leading firms now successfully using IBM Cognos software solutions. For more information go to: www.ecapitaladvisors.com
About IBM Business Analytics
IBM Business Analytics 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 Business Analytics 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 Business Analytics solutions.
Components
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Software:
Cognos Express Reporter, Cognos Express Xcelerator, Cognos Express Advisor, Cognos Express
Legal Information
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010 IBM Canada Ltd. 3755 Riverside Drive Ottawa ON K1G 4K9 Canada Produced in Canada September 2010 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com and Cognos are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at: ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, SQL and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. This case study is an example of how one customer uses IBM products. There is no guarantee of comparable results. References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates. Any reference in this information to non-IBM Web sites are provided for convenience only and do not in any manner serve as an endorsement of those Web sites. The materials at those Web sites are not part of the materials for this IBM product and use of those Web sites is at your own risk.