CHICAGO - Arrowstream, a leading provider of supply chain management and logistics services for the foodservice industry, announced that it is working with Church’s Chicken to help the leading fast food chain achieve growth objectives. Church’s has more than 1,600 locations worldwide in 19 countries and sales exceeding $1 billion.
Church’s Chicken sought a new solution to manage the purchasing process for its volume of stores and 12 distribution centers, because the company desired technology that would enable it to automate critical purchasing actions such as invoice management at the restaurant level.
The company required a solution that would increase efficiencies, could be quickly utilized, would integrate readily with Church’s distributors’ systems, and would also require little to no initial investment in hardware and software.
Church’s found ArrowStream OnDemand to be the right solution that delivered fully-integrated and automated purchasing management with low total cost of ownership.
“ArrowStream was unique for three reasons. First, it allowed us to get the system running quickly, with no investment in hardware and software,” said Alan Stukalsky, CIO, Church’s Chicken. “It offered complete visibility from the supplier to the backdoor of the store and includes logistics information. And it synchronized our distributors’ data with our own.”
To effectively capture share of increasing consumer demand, Church’s has plans to expand its menu and its presence by growing the chain by almost a thousand new restaurants by 2010.
IMPROVE EFFICIENCY FOR CONSUMER AND FRANCHISE SATISFACTION
Church’s identified invoice management as an area that could quickly deliver efficiencies with ArrowStream OnDemand. Managers at each of Church’s 275 U.S. stores were spending about one and one-half hours processing invoices for each of the twice-weekly distribution deliveries.
“With the new automated system, it now takes the average manager just five minutes to enter in each invoice, offering time savings of about 500 man hours per week.” said David Taylor, director of restaurant systems for Church’s Chicken. “This allows restaurant managers to spend more time on customer service, which ultimately improves customer satisfaction and store profitability.”
These new efficiencies, according to Stukalsky, are also having an unintended benefit by creating goodwill throughout the franchise network and contributing to franchisee’s greater satisfaction with the organization’s quality.
ATTAIN FAST START UP AND INTEGRATION WITH DISTRIBUTOR SYSTEMS
ArrowStream OnDemand integrates distributor data with its other chain operator customers, enabling a rapid start-up of the system that was fully synchronized with Church’s distributors.
“ArrowStream possesses such broad expertise and relationships with distributors that we were able to begin to reap benefits immediately,” said Stukalsky.
“To gain optimal visibility from the supplier to the back door of the store, we sought a system that would readily link distributor information to our systems,” he continued. “And if a franchisee wishes to add suppliers, we can rapidly accommodate them and integrate that distributor into the system.”
AUTOMATE PURCHASING PROCESSES WITH LOW TCO
“ArrowStream OnDemand requires no initial investment in hardware and software, unlike other software application providers,” explained Stukalsky. For companies like Church’s that are trying to control overhead, this is a profitable benefit.
Stukalsky believes that low cost of ownership is also enabling Church’s to redirect resources to channels that deliver more direct value to its customers.
SUPPORT GROWTH OBJECTIVES WITH SCALABLE APPLICATIONS
As Church’s continues on its steep growth trajectory, ArrowStream OnDemand is able to rapidly scale to meet Church’s needs in functionality and scope.
“We are working with ArrowStream to adopt software applications that will continue to give us greater visibility of product movement and pricing, and help us automate limited time offer processes,” said Stukalsky.
“We have aggressive growth targets, and with ArrowSteam OnDemand, our software can easily grow with us,” said Stukalsky. “The system is fully scalable to adapt to the chain operator’s needs in terms of function and capacity,” he explained. “With ArrowStream, I have access to more resources than I could possibly gather on my own, and I have a team that is always on the cutting edge of supply chain and logistics solutions,” said Stukalsky.
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About ArrowStream
ArrowStream has helped chain operators and distributors in the food service industry to more effectively manage their supply chain and reduce logistics costs by an average of 20 percent. ArrowStream OnDemand is a software suite that gives chain operators and manufacturers tools to synchronize and manage their supply chain data, thereby enabling panoramic visibility into the supply chain. This software suite has a lower total cost of ownership that is proven to save time and improve decision-making regarding product supply, pricing, and LTO promotion management. ArrowStream’s management team, with more than 60 years of experience in the food service, software, and logistics industries, developed an innovative logistics management network that optimizes each customer’s inventory replenishment and routing, and substantially reduces transportation costs. To learn more, visit www.ArrowStream.com.
View Company Website: http://www.arrowstream.com
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