Helping O`Learys Grow from Local to Global

Customer Case
Helping O’Learys Grow from Local to
Global Concept with Franchise Software and
Laser Focus on Franchise Compliance
With CCM from Chainformation by its side, O’LEARYS has transformed
from a local Swedish business to an international franchise star
equipped with best practice work processes.
About O’Learys
Founded in 1988, O’Learys is Sweden’s leading sports bar and restaurant chain.
With over 70 restaurants in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Germany
and Singapore, the chain is broadly recognized for its American Sports Bar theme,
American styled food and delivering Sports and Entertainment through a customercentric environment defined as “home away from home”.
Business
Franchised resturant/
sports bar concept.
As one of Sweden’s most expansive restaurant chains, the O’Learys Trademark has
been selected as country’s best franchise system by The Swedish Franchise Association
– once in 2005, and once in 2009.
Active markets
The chain is approaching annual sales of 1 Billion SEK (140 Million USD) and operates
with the vision to be the world’s best sports bar and casual dining concept.
7 countries
www.olearyssportsbar.com
As a franchise, O’Learys believed in a disciplined structure where brand consistency
is critical to success, including the cross network use of manuals, suppliers, training
and continuous follow-up on operations. Having nurtured a brand concept built on
unparalleled guest experience and a tireless focus on combining feel, welcome, and
taste, more and more people around the world are becoming regular customers at
O’Learys locations around the world
Business Challenge
By the turn of the new millennium, O’Learys began moving assertively to further grow
its business, increasing marketing activities and focusing its expansion activity. In
addition to opening locations across Sweden, it expanded into Scandinavia, mainland
Europe and Asia.
The strategy worked well, helping O’Learys carve out a leadership role in the sports
bar/restaurant segment with strong focus on customer loyalty and end-user focus.
According to a recent internal report, O’Learys had in a short time become one
Sweden’s most recognized consumer brands, with a brand awareness of 91.6 per cent
of the Swedish population.
But growing from 20 to 70 restaurants in less than a decade doesn’t come without its
fair share of growing pains. As many franchise owners will testify, expansion brings a
heightened need for crystal clear internal communications and disciplined attention to
brand and franchise compliance. Without the right tools and processes in place, many
franchises struggle to overcome these requirements, and grow effectively.
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Customer Case
“Not only do you
need a tool that facilitates day-to-day
communications
- you also need an
intelligent software
platform.”
Christian Bellander,
Chief Operating Officer
Oleary’s Trademark
In 2003, executives at O’Learys acknowledged that having many restaurant
locations with their own processes, working independently, caused inefficiency and
communication issues that could prove harmful to both the customer experience, and
ultimately brand equity.
The company decided to laser focus on creating a consistent brand experience, to
tool up, and provide its franchise network with a highly integrated and flexible work
platform that enabled communication, collaboration and content to be shared with
speed and efficiency. By doing so, the company believed it would be better equipped
to manage its brand.
According to Christian Bellander, Chief Operating Officer at O’Learys, “With rapid
expansion comes a great responsibility to provide the members of your franchise
network with the right tools to succeed. Not only do you need a tool that facilitates
day-to-day communications - you also need an intelligent software platform that
meets the unique requirements of the franchise industry, and is able to guide and
educate your organization about your brand concept in a manner that is approachable
around the world in real time.”
But where to start? As a first step to laser focus on franchise concept compliance, the
executive leadership team at O’Learys decided to implement a group-wide approach
that would help:
• Bring together franchise communications across the restaurants’ global locations
into one single platform
• Store, share, and maintain franchise manuals, documents, and marketing materials
in a one-stop platform
• Facilitate the design and execution of customer loyalty programs and marketing
promotions while respecting the O’Learys brand guidelines and standards
This approach would set it apart from the competition and provide what Chainformation
terms “distinctive capability,” a franchise’s unique formula for business success aimed
at securing brand compliance while outperforming the competition.
For help in realizing an Intranet-based communication
platform, O’Learys wanted to team with a partner that
would bring not only expertise in technical environments
and system integration, but also bringing a deep
understanding of the franchise world.
While the company considered several franchise software
developers, Chainformation was the logical choice. Over
the past twelve years, Chainformation has provided
franchise software for some of Scandinavia’s largest
franchise- and retail-chains, with a track record with
industry leaders such as Wayne’s Coffee, IC Company and
ICEBAR by ICEHOTEL.
How Chainformation helped
In partnering with Chainformation, O’Learys were able
to leverage a franchise specific solution based on proven
technologies and used by other industry leaders.
The move gave O’Learys instant access to a high powered
Intranet that would function as the chain’s delivery vehicle
for know-how, business data and content for the daily
operations of the franchise including:
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Customer Case
“Having partnered
with Chainformation since 2004, we
have continuously
worked with their
team of experts to
align the CCM platform with our business objectives.”
Christian Bellander,
Chief Operating Officer
Oleary’s Trademark
• Faster, role-based communication
• Digital franchise manuals
• Brand and Identity Guidelines
• Marketing Design Templates and Execution tools
• Daily Sales Reporting
While CCM is ready to be used out of the box and can be implemented in just 2-4
weeks, O’LEARYS quickly grasped that CCM was a platform that could be continuously
upgraded to support future expansion. Working with Chainformation’s team of
development experts, O’Learys realized a number of features to be used across the
network including:
• E-mail and SMS Text Message Marketing tool to drive customer traffic
• Recipe and ingredient management to plan, print menus
• Access to preferred vendors and procurement processes
• Customer Loyalty Program Management and Mailing Features
“Having partnered with Chainformation since 2004, we have continuously worked
with their team of experts to align the CCM platform with our business objectives and
creating useful tools for the members of our franchise network. For instance, we have
integrated our entire procurement process with CCM. This means that any user with
buyer access in the O’Learys network can access vendor lists, preferred vendor pricing,
procurement terms, discounts and e-commerce systems regardless of their location in
the world.”
Since 2004, O’Learys has also connected its entire menu
database with printers around the world, allowing
employees to compose their own menus and coordinating
production with a local printer. With over 150 dishes stored
in the system, each restaurant can quickly customize a menu
based on the meals that are in demand in that region, or for
a specific season.
Some of the information shared via CCM is either
confidential or business sensitive. But the franchise software
is completely role-based so that users will only see what they
need to see. For instance, recipes and secret ingredients can
only be accessed by the master chef.
More than just a gatekeeper of confidential information, CCM
also helps streamline communication so that employees are
not over-informed.
Perhaps one of the most useful features included with
the O’Learys CCM franchise software, is the Web Content
Management Plug-in. This plug-in provides O’Learys with the
ability to publish and manage content on the global customer
website, as well as any of its local customer websites.
With pre-approved web-page templates and role-based user rights, O’Learys can rely
on the plug-in to guarantee that pages published will be using pre-approved brand
standards, and that websites will look the same in every location and geography.
Says Anders Hall, Sales & Marketing Manager at Chainformation: “Through the Web
Content Management Plug-in, we are not only providing O’Learys with the ability to
create and publish content on their website. We are providing each restaurant location
with the ability to manage their own, local website content. For instance, a restaurant
owner in Singapore is able to publish news about an upcoming local sports events
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Customer Case
without knowing anything about web design or how to build websites. Everything is
driven out of the CCM franchise software using templates designed according to the
O’Learys brand guidelines.”
How the implementation was done
In rolling out CCM in the O’Learys network, Chainformation
was committed to designing, testing and implementing
CCM with minimal disruptions to O’Learys existing daily
business.
Chainformation deployed a team of professionals
who were involved in all aspects of project delivery,
beginning with analysing O’Learys key processes, and
business drivers. Through a series of requirementsgathering workshops and functional design sessions,
Chainformation were able to frame a customer unique
solution that supported O’Learys in each of its focus
areas, including guest management, brand management
and staff education.
Once the functional design was in place, the team worked
quickly to complete the CCM-platform customized for
O’Learys, including technical design, development and
testing and system integration.
The primary solution components included:
The roll-out of CCM, state of the art Franchise software, as the single point of entry
and communication platform for the O’Learys network.
This customized approach of an out-of-the-box solution was designed to meet all the
system-, knowledge delivery- and communication-needs of the O’Learys network.
The solution equips the members of the franchise network with a tool that makes daily
operations easier and more transparent, while at the same time providing head office
with a tool that helps secure brand compliance, improve communication flow and
deplete operational deficiencies:
• A user friendly-interface for speedy publication of news and updates
• Real-time access to Digital franchise manuals, Brand Guidelines, and Identity
Standards
• A media asset manager that contains brand-compliant visual elements such as
images, logos and document templates.
• A design tool that enables the design of local promotions and e-mail campaigns
• A management tool for the O’Learys loyalty club program
• A SMS Text Message Marketing Tool for executing campaigns that drive customer
traffic
• Customer feedback functionality
• Single sign in functionality for other web partners such as Mystery Shopping
initiatives, web education, online print shop and more.
High performance Delivered
With CCM by Chainformation by its side, O’LEARYS has transformed from a local
Swedish business to an international franchise star equipped with best practice work
processes.
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Customer Case
Every O’LEARYS location now has one single point of entry from which it can access
franchise manuals and marketing modules, communicate and cross-collaborate, while
also receiving important updates and news from the O’LEARYS universe.
As Franchise manuals are updated in real-time, CCM enables O’LEARYS to see if one
location or staff member has missed to take part of an important training document.
The system even keeps track if anything has been printed out.
“The success of any franchise starts with people. With CCM by Chainformation, we
have equipped our organization with a state of the art tool which allows us to maximize
and fully leverage the potential of the O’Learys franchise and brand concept. As we
laser focus on creating the perfect environment for our customers, we can implement
large scale changes and keep our network informed in seconds,” explains Christian
Bellander.
According to Anders Hall, Sales and Marketing Manager at Chainformation, “Partnering
with O’Learys, the implementation of our franchise software platform is an excellent
example of how we were able to customize the user experience completely based on
the business objectives of the client, while equipping their members of their franchise
network with a tool that simplified their daily operations.”
CHAINFORMATION
We help equip your franchise network with
timely, relevant and critical know-how.
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