Restaurantes Toks Orders IT to Go
Oracle On Demand applications helps Mexico City-based chain adapt and grow
By Alan Joch, February 2009
In 2006 when Mexico City based Restaurantes Toks launched an aggressive expansion strategy to significantly increase the number of family-oriented restaurants it offers, management knew it also had to maintain the high level of customer service its patrons had come to expect. This was especially important considering the size of the expansion project—Toks planned to grow the chain at least by 20 percent a year through 2010. So Toks sought out ERP and customer relationship management (CRM) applications to efficiently manage the business during the expansion. . “The growth project was an opportunity to improve all our processes and adopt best practices,” says David Leo, IT systems director.
But time and staffing constraints forced management to face another critical obstacle: how to best implement enterprise-class applications. Rather than installing and maintaining its core applications in-house, Toks opted for an on-demand solution that tapped into IT resources maintained hundreds of miles away at Oracle’s data center in Austin, Texas.
The decisions paid off. After requiring just eight months to launch the hosted financial, purchasing, and supply-chain modules in Oracle E-Business Suite, the company cut the time required for its daily financial transactions up to 30 percent in some cases such as reconciliation process. Just as importantly, the company is convinced the new applications and infrastructure can fuel its growth plans without downtime surprises or unexpected spikes in costs. “Performance, security, and business continuity are critical to our business, and with on-demand we can achieve these capabilities for years to come,” Leo says.
(Best) Practice Makes Perfect
In the first phase of Restaurantes Toks’ IT upgrade, it implemented on-demand versions of CRM and the Oracle E-Business Suite’s financials, asset management, purchasing, inventory control, and production planning. Also included in phase one were the Oracle iSupplier and iExpenses portals.
As the company upgraded its applications, the restaurant chain simultaneously automated business processes for production and purchasing planning. This reduced the purchasing errors the restaurant had seen when its staff placed orders by phone, Leo says. The new capabilities also provide detailed reports about how much money the restaurant spends with each supplier, which in turn helps it negotiate larger discounts based on purchasing volumes.
The second phase of Restaurantes Toks’ on-demand efforts, which ended earlier this year, launched additional E-Business Suite modules for projects, training, planning and budgeting , payroll and HR. “ERP applications are critical for our business because so many important processes depend on the system,” Leo says.
Although Toks evaluated other outsourcing providers it chose Oracle because it offered ready access to product experts, which helped the company find quick answers when questions arose about how best to manage its data and infrastructure. “The outsourcing option was the best for us because we didn’t have the necessary expertise to achieve these goals in house.”
The in-house IT staff that Restaurantes Toks continues to maintain now focuses its efforts on helping business users get the most out of the chain’s enterprise applications, Leo adds.
Budgeting in the midst of its on-going restaurant expansion plans is similarly simplified. “Before on demand, we needed to consider a variety of expenses beyond applications, such as hard disks, servers, air conditioning, and uninterruptible power supplies,” he says.
“With this approach our budget only needs to address the monthly rate we pay, which is based on the number of users who are accessing the applications,” Leo says.
And financial control like this will help Restaurantes Toks keep its growth plans on track, Leo says. “With on-demand, we’ll be able to accurately forecast our future IT costs as our company grows.”
