Plenty of fast-food chains would be satisfied by becoming their country’s largest brand, but not this fast-food chain. While the company has hit that milestone with a network of nearly 3,200 restaurants in the Philippines, it is aiming for growth around the world.
Aligning IT with business growth
The company realised that to expand, it needed to update its IT operations. Working with DXC Technology, the company embarked on an end-to-end technology modernisation program that reached from its data centre to point-of-sale terminals across more than 3,200 stores in the Philippines.
The Manilla-based company’s goal is to become one of the world’s top 5 restaurant companies as it has expanded into countries in North America, Europe, China and Southeast Asia and Saudi Arabia. The company’s business strategy is to cater to each country’s regional tastes and food preferences with a variety of food brands.
However, the fast-food giant realised that to support expansion, it had to overcome a number of technology challenges such as frequent outages of the key enterprise applications including SAP, legacy IT infrastructure issues, unreliable networks, and inadequate processes and standards. If these issues were permitted to fester, the management team understood, they could threaten both the company’s operations in the Philippines and around the world.
“We needed to align our IT operations to keep pace with the growth of the business,” says the head of IT at the company. “We chose DXC to help us standardise processes, optimise IT costs and improve operational agility. These were the first important steps toward our overall transformation plans, including a move to the public cloud and increased automation.”
“We needed to align our IT operations to keep pace with the growth of the business. We chose DXC to help us standardise processes, optimise IT costs and improve operational agility. These were the first important steps toward our overall transformation plans, including a move to the public cloud and increased automation.”
Head of IT Global fast-food chain
Exceeding IT service levels
To begin, DXC’s IT enterprise outsourcing services (awarded in 2017) helped the company achieve greater stability and efficiency for both corporate and commissary operations. DXC took full responsibility for its data centre, servers, and enterprise applications, as well as ongoing maintenance and support.
DXC moved quickly, introducing an IT modernisation program that included a new service desk, supported by ServiceNow tools and new processes. DXC performed well, exceeding the company’s internal service level agreements (SLAs), introduced automation, and innovation to bring in operational efficiencies, and as a result was awarded a second major contract in 2018 to support more than 3,200 stores in the Philippines.
“With DXC now handling all support, whenever there’s a problem, DXC simply fixes it.”
Head of IT Global fast-food chain
DXC performed well, exceeding the company’s internal service level agreements (SLAs), introduced automation, and innovation to bring in operational efficiencies, and as a result was awarded a second major contract in 2018 to support more than 3,200 stores in the Philippines.
Value delivered
Giving DXC responsibility for IT support helped the company increase agility in service management and simplify the approach managing the full lifecycle of its enterprise applications.
“With DXC now handling all support, whenever there’s a problem, DXC simply fixes it,” the head of IT says.
Over the past year, DXC helped the company reduce IT performance-related incidents by 43 percent, consistently meeting or exceeding SLAs over 4 years.
“Doing business with DXC is easy,” the head of IT says. “DXC understands our business and mission, and when something goes wrong, DXC doesn’t just focus on closing an incident, they always analyse the root cause, so it doesn’t reoccur. I appreciate that mindset from the team.”
New platform in the AWS cloud
With DXC’s help, the fast-food chain migrated its SAP and associated apps to the public cloud in just 8 months using DXC Platform as a Service for SAP on AWS, a full-stack, managed cloud service that simplifies the management of SAP applications with automated features and on-demand support.
The new cloud platform solved a serious challenge for the company. Nearly full stack SAP applications were running in its data centre on aging hardware that could no longer be upgraded or expanded — and the cost of replacing the hardware was prohibitively high.
DXC’s Platform as a Service approach provided a low-risk, low-cost way to refresh the company’s technology and extend it throughout the business.
Head of IT Global fast-food chain
Ensuring business resiliency
Business resiliency became a major focus for restaurants in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak and local restrictions that heavily impacts sales. For the company, the move to the cloud was the right answer.
DXC’s Platform as a Service for SAP delivers high levels of flexibility, enabling the company to quickly scale SAP capacity and create, clone, and suspend apps as the market demands.
DXC provides 24x7 support and disaster recovery that cover both the IT environment and the SAP applications.
DXC also helped the company withstand the unforeseen disruptions of 2020 by providing cost relief and service credits to support the company’s work-from home initiatives. DXC quickly installed a virtual private network to enable secure connections for staff working from home, and DXC set up support hubs in multiple locations to efficiently address user support issues.
“Doing business with DXC is easy. DXC understands our business and mission, and when something goes wrong, DXC doesn’t just focus on closing an incident, they always analyse the root cause, so it doesn’t reoccur. I appreciate that mindset from the team.”
Head of IT Global fast-food chain
Driving innovation
The customer considers DXC a key partner for growth and innovation.
“I love how DXC has shown empathy and a lot of adaptability and flexibility in unexpected situations,” the head of IT says.
“Even though it’s our fourth year, you can feel the enthusiasm in supporting new initiatives and pushing for new platforms to help improve the business.”