Case Study

A leading global provider of food, facilities and uniform services to education, healthcare, business and industry, and sports, leisure and corrections clients. The core market is North America, which is supplemented by an additional 20-country footprint.

• Provides services to 89% of the Fortune 500 companies
• Serves over 500 million meals annually to approximately 5 million students at colleges, universities, and K-12 schools
• Serves over 2,000 healthcare facilities, collectively representing over 75 million patient days annually
• Caters to approximately 100 million sports fans annually through partnerships with 149 professional and collegiate teams

The food industry is a regulated business and there are strict compliance guidelines. The company faced multiple challenges.

The transient nature of the staff at front lines resulted in high training costs and low customer/staff engagement. The business had low levels of IT-based integration between front lines and head office which meant delayed data acquisition, low compliance and high Non Value Add (NVA) time spent in data gathering. There were often instances of low compliance be it in training, recipes, food temperatures, food quality and waste management. All this resulted in low customer satisfaction.

For example, food ingredients like meat and milk need to be stored at an optimum temperature range. This is a compliance requirement, and the temperature needs to be recorded thrice daily and stored for 6 months for inspections. This was done manually and kept on sheets of paper, at each location and the head office.

Impressico worked on an integrated strategy with the client’s IT team to develop a suite of tools consisting of a mobile platform, web-based management app and an integrated back-end designed to deliver operational tools that drive quality and customer satisfaction.

Benefit of Tools

• Used by both front line associates and managers, operations are streamlined, allowing more time to focus on the customer

Salient Features

• Enterprise iPad app provides training to set up food stations
• Development of Bluetooth driver for measuring the temperature of food items inside the kitchen
• Recipes/ Scaling/ Batching tools for use by chefs
• Easy maintenance of Ingredients/Menus/Service/Results and station set up with photos and videos
• Easy capture of data – service results, production prep and temperature records

End User

Front Line Associates:

• Speeds up the onboarding process via on-demand self-learning tools designed for associates
• Enables associates to work independently and efficiently providing more time to serve customer needs
• Engages associates through easily accessible tools developed specifically for their needs

Front Line Managers:

• Access to the tools managers use in daily operations
• These tools, in combination with the mobility of iPads, free managers from their office desktop
• Allows for “management from the floor” – opportunities for more engagement with customers and staff
• Provides managers with access to real time temperature-taking activities
• Real-time data entry speeds daily internal processes

End-user benefits are probably best described by the following appreciation email sent by a Front Line Manager after using the solution for 3 weeks:

“I love the functionality of the app and I am now able to catch up with post-production and waste. It takes me 10 minutes in the morning to close out post-production for the previous day!”

Cost Savings

• On-boarding– 22% Faster with on-demand self-learning tools and station set up
• Paper/Printing Cost Savings– No need to print for holding temperatures, production/service worksheets and recipe cards
• Food- Improved forecasting; reduced waste; Training/Job Aids: recipe adherence

Engagement and Non Value Add (NVA) Time Reduction

• Associates empowered with tools that were developed for their needs
• Reduced FLM/FLA in administrative activities Avg./yr/person: FLM –200 hours; FLAs –1000 hours

Quality Improvements

• Improved Food Quality- Estimated due to on-demand recipe scaling and batch capability
• Food Safety- Increased temperature capture compliance, enhanced by Bluetooth capability Corrective
• Actions reduced from 27.1% to 1.5%

Revenue

• Due to measured CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) improvements, post system adoption