News release: January 18, 2016
Melbourne restaurant chain The Pancake Parlour has simplified reporting, business analysis and ease-of-use since Evolution Business Systems (EBS) upgraded its financial management system.
The 50-year-old company, which operates 12 restaurants throughout Melbourne, recognised in 2012 that its ageing business management system was holding back its growth plans.
Simple tasks, like exporting data from the system into a spreadsheet, were not possible, preventing the company from undertaking deeper analysis of its everyday business data. Also, each time The Pancake Parlour opened a new restaurant, it had to pay thousands of dollars to commission new consolidated financial reports incorporating its latest outlet.
Through a tender in 2012, The Pancake Parlour selected Melbourne-based EBS to upgrade it to the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, the global enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that provides small and midsize businesses with greater control over their financials. The Pancake Parlour Financial Controller Darren Cotton said the Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade had made The Pancake Parlour nimbler. “It has succeeded in giving us more flexibility,” he said.
“In the past we weren’t able to export our data into Excel, whereas now we can export any report we run into Excel, massage the data and produce reports that are meaningful and relevant to our restaurant managers and our line managers. “It’s also given us the ability to customise our financial reports. For example, if we add a new restaurant, we can rewrite our financial reports or our P&L (Profit & Loss) report to add that restaurant into our consolidated P&L.
“Previously, we had to spend thousands of dollars for a consultant to rewrite those reports so it’s given us that flexibility and saved us time and money too. It’s been a good move for us.”
Mr Cotton said another benefit was ease of use. “My staff believe that it’s easier to use the system and easy to navigate their way around the system with more shortcuts,” he said.
The Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade was undertaken by EBS, a business management software specialist that equips its clients with software designed to achieve their business goals.
Mr. Cotton said The Pancake Parlour chose EBS through a competitive tender. “We thought they were a very good cultural fit for us and the decision proved to be the right one,” he said.
“The changeover from the old system to the new system was a very smooth and painless process. “I couldn’t be more satisfied with the decision we made to move to EBS, love working with the guys, the support’s excellent. Not a month would go by where I don’t get an email or a phone call from EBS just checking up to make sure we’re happy with the system. It makes you feel you’re with the right IT partner.
“EBS is agile, nimble and eager to please, so you feel like you’ve got that support behind you.”
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This post was written by Jonathan Martin, COO at Evolution Business Systems.
His expertise extends to software development, support, implementations and project management, he can envisage potential problems and identify them to improve the client experience and outcomes, like a mad scientist, behaviour, statistics and data are where he gets his insights from and lives by a golden rule to always start at the beginning as there are no shortcuts. Jonathan’s passion is to make a difference by assisting clients with their business problems.