A joined-up business

Tight margins are a fact of life in the food trade and centralising processes wherever possible will increase efficiency and contain costs in the back-office. Managing supplier payments is a good example: with deliveries every day, this could create an admin headache, but, as a robust business management solution, Sage 200 takes these payments in its stride.

A critical requirement of a new business management is the ability to integrate other business systems to create a holistic view, such as front-of-house systems. Staffing is likely to represent a significant overhead, so you need to be fully aware of your payroll costs and be able to compare these between locations. Fixed assets (premises, furniture and fixtures, catering equipment…) will be another big expense.

With Sage 200, practically any integration requirement can be addressed to synchronise business data and streamline your day-to-day processes. Rather than relying on spreadsheets and reports, generated with different data from different systems, everyone then has a single version of the truth.

With meaningful information flowing in on a daily basis, managers gain a consistent, holistic picture of the health of the business view as it is right now. They can view a snapshot and then dig down to underlying data and root causes of any anomalies in increasing levels of ‘granularity’.

Next time, I’ll introduce Pinnacle customer Tortilla, the specialist in high quality burritos. Tortilla is set to double its restaurant footprint over the next two years and has chosen Sage 200 to support its ambitious growth plans.