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Customer Case

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BusinessFranchised resturant/sports bar concept.

Active markets7 countries

www.olearyssportsbar.com

Helping O’Learys Grow from Local to Global Concept with Franchise Software and Laser Focus on Franchise Compliance

With CCM from Chainformation by its side, O’LEARYS has transformed from a local Swedish business to an international franchise star equipped with best practice work processes.

About O’LearysFounded in 1988, O’Learys is Sweden’s leading sports bar and restaurant chain. With over 70 restaurants in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Germany and Singapore, the chain is broadly recognized for its American Sports Bar theme, American styled food and delivering Sports and Entertainment through a customer-centric environment defined as “home away from home”.

As one of Sweden’s most expansive restaurant chains, the O’Learys Trademark has been selected as country’s best franchise system by The Swedish Franchise Association – once in 2005, and once in 2009.

The chain is approaching annual sales of 1 Billion SEK (140 Million USD) and operates with the vision to be the world’s best sports bar and casual dining concept.

As a franchise, O’Learys believed in a disciplined structure where brand consistency is critical to success, including the cross network use of manuals, suppliers, training and continuous follow-up on operations. Having nurtured a brand concept built on unparalleled guest experience and a tireless focus on combining feel, welcome, and taste, more and more people around the world are becoming regular customers at O’Learys locations around the world

Business ChallengeBy the turn of the new millennium, O’Learys began moving assertively to further grow its business, increasing marketing activities and focusing its expansion activity. In addition to opening locations across Sweden, it expanded into Scandinavia, mainland Europe and Asia.

The strategy worked well, helping O’Learys carve out a leadership role in the sports bar/restaurant segment with strong focus on customer loyalty and end-user focus.

According to a recent internal report, O’Learys had in a short time become one Sweden’s most recognized consumer brands, with a brand awareness of 91.6 per cent of the Swedish population.

But growing from 20 to 70 restaurants in less than a decade doesn’t come without its fair share of growing pains. As many franchise owners will testify, expansion brings a heightened need for crystal clear internal communications and disciplined attention to brand and franchise compliance. Without the right tools and processes in place, many franchises struggle to overcome these requirements, and grow effectively.

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Customer Case

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In 2003, executives at O’Learys acknowledged that having many restaurant locations with their own processes, working independently, caused inefficiency and communication issues that could prove harmful to both the customer experience, and ultimately brand equity.

The company decided to laser focus on creating a consistent brand experience, to tool up, and provide its franchise network with a highly integrated and flexible work platform that enabled communication, collaboration and content to be shared with speed and efficiency. By doing so, the company believed it would be better equipped to manage its brand.

According to Christian Bellander, Chief Operating Officer at O’Learys, “With rapid expansion comes a great responsibility to provide the members of your franchise network with the right tools to succeed. Not only do you need a tool that facilitates day-to-day communications - you also need an intelligent software platform that meets the unique requirements of the franchise industry, and is able to guide and educate your organization about your brand concept in a manner that is approachable around the world in real time.”

But where to start? As a first step to laser focus on franchise concept compliance, the executive leadership team at O’Learys decided to implement a group-wide approach that would help:

• Bring together franchise communications across the restaurants’ global locations into one single platform• Store, share, and maintain franchise manuals, documents, and marketing materials in a one-stop platform• Facilitate the design and execution of customer loyalty programs and marketing promotions while respecting the O’Learys brand guidelines and standards This approach would set it apart from the competition and provide what Chainformation terms “distinctive capability,” a franchise’s unique formula for business success aimed at securing brand compliance while outperforming the competition.

For help in realizing an Intranet-based communication platform, O’Learys wanted to team with a partner that would bring not only expertise in technical environments and system integration, but also bringing a deep understanding of the franchise world.

While the company considered several franchise software developers, Chainformation was the logical choice. Over the past twelve years, Chainformation has provided franchise software for some of Scandinavia’s largest franchise- and retail-chains, with a track record with industry leaders such as Wayne’s Coffee, IC Company and ICEBAR by ICEHOTEL.

How Chainformation helpedIn partnering with Chainformation, O’Learys were able to leverage a franchise specific solution based on proven technologies and used by other industry leaders.

The move gave O’Learys instant access to a high powered Intranet that would function as the chain’s delivery vehicle for know-how, business data and content for the daily operations of the franchise including:

“Not only do you need a tool that fa-cilitates day-to-day communications - you also need an intelligent software platform.”Christian Bellander, Chief Operating Officer Oleary’s Trademark

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Customer Case

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• Faster, role-based communication • Digital franchise manuals • Brand and Identity Guidelines • Marketing Design Templates and Execution tools• Daily Sales Reporting While CCM is ready to be used out of the box and can be implemented in just 2-4 weeks, O’LEARYS quickly grasped that CCM was a platform that could be continuously upgraded to support future expansion. Working with Chainformation’s team of development experts, O’Learys realized a number of features to be used across the network including:

• E-mail and SMS Text Message Marketing tool to drive customer traffic• Recipe and ingredient management to plan, print menus• Access to preferred vendors and procurement processes• Customer Loyalty Program Management and Mailing Features “Having partnered with Chainformation since 2004, we have continuously worked with their team of experts to align the CCM platform with our business objectives and creating useful tools for the members of our franchise network. For instance, we have integrated our entire procurement process with CCM. This means that any user with buyer access in the O’Learys network can access vendor lists, preferred vendor pricing, procurement terms, discounts and e-commerce systems regardless of their location in the world.”

Since 2004, O’Learys has also connected its entire menu database with printers around the world, allowing employees to compose their own menus and coordinating production with a local printer. With over 150 dishes stored in the system, each restaurant can quickly customize a menu based on the meals that are in demand in that region, or for a specific season.

Some of the information shared via CCM is either confidential or business sensitive. But the franchise software is completely role-based so that users will only see what they need to see. For instance, recipes and secret ingredients can only be accessed by the master chef.

More than just a gatekeeper of confidential information, CCM also helps streamline communication so that employees are not over-informed.

Perhaps one of the most useful features included with the O’Learys CCM franchise software, is the Web Content Management Plug-in. This plug-in provides O’Learys with the ability to publish and manage content on the global customer website, as well as any of its local customer websites.

With pre-approved web-page templates and role-based user rights, O’Learys can rely on the plug-in to guarantee that pages published will be using pre-approved brand standards, and that websites will look the same in every location and geography.

Says Anders Hall, Sales & Marketing Manager at Chainformation: “Through the Web Content Management Plug-in, we are not only providing O’Learys with the ability to create and publish content on their website. We are providing each restaurant location with the ability to manage their own, local website content. For instance, a restaurant owner in Singapore is able to publish news about an upcoming local sports events

“Having partnered with Chainforma-tion since 2004, we have continuously worked with their team of experts to align the CCM plat-form with our busi-ness objectives.”Christian Bellander, Chief Operating Officer Oleary’s Trademark

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Customer Case

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without knowing anything about web design or how to build websites. Everything is driven out of the CCM franchise software using templates designed according to the O’Learys brand guidelines.”

How the implementation was doneIn rolling out CCM in the O’Learys network, Chainformation was committed to designing, testing and implementing CCM with minimal disruptions to O’Learys existing daily business.

Chainformation deployed a team of professionals who were involved in all aspects of project delivery, beginning with analysing O’Learys key processes, and business drivers. Through a series of requirements-gathering workshops and functional design sessions, Chainformation were able to frame a customer unique solution that supported O’Learys in each of its focus areas, including guest management, brand management and staff education.

Once the functional design was in place, the team worked quickly to complete the CCM-platform customized for O’Learys, including technical design, development and testing and system integration.

The primary solution components included:

The roll-out of CCM, state of the art Franchise software, as the single point of entry and communication platform for the O’Learys network.

This customized approach of an out-of-the-box solution was designed to meet all the system-, knowledge delivery- and communication-needs of the O’Learys network.

The solution equips the members of the franchise network with a tool that makes daily operations easier and more transparent, while at the same time providing head office with a tool that helps secure brand compliance, improve communication flow and deplete operational deficiencies:

• A user friendly-interface for speedy publication of news and updates• Real-time access to Digital franchise manuals, Brand Guidelines, and Identity Standards• A media asset manager that contains brand-compliant visual elements such as images, logos and document templates. • A design tool that enables the design of local promotions and e-mail campaigns• A management tool for the O’Learys loyalty club program• A SMS Text Message Marketing Tool for executing campaigns that drive customer traffic• Customer feedback functionality• Single sign in functionality for other web partners such as Mystery Shopping initiatives, web education, online print shop and more.

High performance DeliveredWith CCM by Chainformation by its side, O’LEARYS has transformed from a local Swedish business to an international franchise star equipped with best practice work processes.

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Customer Case

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Every O’LEARYS location now has one single point of entry from which it can access franchise manuals and marketing modules, communicate and cross-collaborate, while also receiving important updates and news from the O’LEARYS universe.

As Franchise manuals are updated in real-time, CCM enables O’LEARYS to see if one location or staff member has missed to take part of an important training document. The system even keeps track if anything has been printed out.

“The success of any franchise starts with people. With CCM by Chainformation, we have equipped our organization with a state of the art tool which allows us to maximize and fully leverage the potential of the O’Learys franchise and brand concept. As we laser focus on creating the perfect environment for our customers, we can implement large scale changes and keep our network informed in seconds,” explains Christian Bellander.

According to Anders Hall, Sales and Marketing Manager at Chainformation, “Partnering with O’Learys, the implementation of our franchise software platform is an excellent example of how we were able to customize the user experience completely based on the business objectives of the client, while equipping their members of their franchise network with a tool that simplified their daily operations.”

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