"Our goal is to standardise on one business intelligence product suite. With Business Object we now have one integrated solution that handles data integration, reporting and analytics. This single dynamic view of our business will help us to achieve operational excellence and maintain leadership in a competitive industry."

Stewart Walker, IT Director, Mitchells & Butlers

Mitchells & Butlers Optimises Pub, Bar and Restaurant Performance with Business Objects

Mitchells & Butlers manages over 2,000 pubs, bars and restaurants. The company has grown organically with the creation of market leading brands such as All Bar One, Vintage Inns, Toby Carvery, Edward's, O'Neill's and Scream, as well as through successful acquisitions such as Harvester Restaurants and Browns. As part of an international expansion plan, Mitchells & Butlers has also purchased Alex, a German chain of bars, and opened an All Bar One in Germany.

In the fiercely competitive pub and restaurant business timely and accurate management information is key to ensuring brand quality, consistency and compliance. Mitchells & Butlers uses business intelligence solutions from Business Objects to access, analyse and share up-to-date information that underpins both day-to-day management and strategic understanding of brand performance. The company is also using Professional Services from Business Objects for best practice implementation.

Access, Integrate and Deliver Data

Mitchells & Butlers stores company information in a central data warehouse. However, like many organisations, Mitchells & Butlers has multiple systems based on different technologies and until recently the process of transferring data between applications and also moving it to the warehouse was resource intensive and time consuming.

The recent implementation of BusinessObjects™ Data Integrator has significantly speeded the process of integrating data across multiple systems and into the data warehouse. "Mitchells & Butlers wanted a consistent and automated method for data integration. The adoption of Data Integrator™ has delivered significant productivity improvements, we are now able to move data four to six times faster. In addition to the speed and efficiency, the ease of maintenance and reuse is a major benefit," says Paul Tomkinson, Integration Manager, Mitchells & Butlers.

These capabilities are supporting the increased demand from the business for fast access to actionable business information. Stewart Walker, IT Director, Mitchells & Butlers, says, "With Business Objects Data Integrator™ we are delivering business benefit by enhancing information availability throughout the company in whatever timeframe is needed whether historical, trend, monthly, daily, or even in real-time. In addition, using BusinessObjects™ query and reporting tools users can access and manage this information themselves. As a result, there has been a significant increase in demand from users across the company for access to information."

New Developments

In addition to improving existing system interfaces, BusinessObjects Data Integrator™ is supporting the deployment of new applications:

PeopleSoft HR During its recent deployment of PeopleSoft HR Mitchells & Butlers used Data Integrator to rapidly move historical data from the old system, ensuring immediate access to all the information from day one of the system going live. "Using our old manual based approach, this process would have taken 400 man days and we could not have achieved it on time," says Tomkinson. "Using Data Integrator the process took only 50 man days which equates to an 8 fold increase in productivity."

Retail Estate Management Mitchells & Butlers are planning to use the web services capability within Data Integrator to support Retail Estate management by tracking the value of properties within the portfolio. Using Data Integrator, information will be gathered from an extranet used by the Construction division of the company to build a complete picture of each property available from one central source. This will be used by Retail Estates to classify outlets, monitor their state of repair and, by combining this information with demographic data, to support rebranding and new outlet decisions. "The use of Data Integrator will be a key enabler in delivering this application within a specific cost and time limit and we expect 100% Return On Investment within one year," says Walker.

Enterprise Performance Dashboards Currently BusinessObjects™ is used extensively to analyse and report on information within Mitchells & Butlers Finance, Marketing, Risk & Compliance, HR and Regional Management departments. Moving forward, Mitchells & Butlers also plans to use BusinessObjects™ Dashboard Manager to develop management dashboard applications which provide an at-a-glance status of key company performance indicators (KPI's). These dashboards will support regional managers by allowing them to monitor company performance and alerting them quickly to any problem areas that need resolution.

"As regional managers take on extra responsibility, it is essential that they have visibility of day-to-day operational performance in each of the outlets they oversee and understand how that impacts overall strategic corporate goals. Dashboards will deliver the relevant information they need in a simple format, enabling them to spend less time analysing information and more time on the road visiting outlets," says Tomkinson.

Best Practice Implementation Mitchells & Bulters are using Professional Services from Business Objects to maximise the success of its business intelligence initiatives. These services include architecture design, development, skills transfer and best practice guides for future projects.

Walker concludes, "Our goal is to standardise on one business intelligence product suite. With Business Object we now have one, integrated solution that handles data integration, reporting and analytics. This single dynamic view of our business will help us to achieve operational excellence and maintain leadership in a competitive industry."