FoodServiceCo empowers its supply chain and operations team with actionable insights using Microsoft Power BI Solution

In 1988, Mustafa Kiamil (founder of FoodserviceCo), a restaurateur, spotted a gap in the food industry. This motivated him to establish a more efficient food and drink supply for eateries in North London. He went on to smoothen the daily operations of several cafes, quick service restaurants, pubs, hotels, schools, local authorities and more. A noble concept had soon metamorphosed into a successful business.

In 2009, Mustafa and his team launched an online-ordering service. FoodServiceCo’s customers could now visit the website and order products. The sales figures escalated. In 2013, 33% sales poured in from online orders (its 63% at present and growing).

In 25 years, FoodserviceCo spread across geographies to become UK’s leading food delivery specialist. The orders, employees, products, customers and distribution centres grew. However, the way the business was done remained the same. It started the tale of trouble.

No analytics of product temperature threshold

FoodServiceCo faced issues with food product condition while they were in transit. They delivered 4500+ type of products to various cafes, restaurants, caterers, schools, delis etc. It was essential to maintain the chiller and freezer temperature of the frozen products to ensure maximum customer satisfaction. Had the temperature spiked or reduced, there was a great risk of product returns. If the customers served stale food, there existed a grave possibility of lawsuits. It would affect the revenue directly since they delivered 60,000+ orders daily. To avoid that, maintaining the temperature threshold was extremely essential.

No Inventory Analytics

FoodServiceCo lacked having a unified view of its product inventory across 11 distribution centers. To track all available products manually was cumbersome. It was time-consuming. Also, it enabled no intelligent actions to optimize the inventory management process. There lacked a 360-degree view on type of products available, their movement, aging, revenue generation patterns etc. It became a challenge to predict and bridge the demand and supply gap for the next time period.

No Driver Behaviour & Productivity Analytics

Just like the inventory, FoodServiceCo lacked visibility on its 300 drivers’ behaviour and their productivity. It made the fleet managers not have intelligent insights about route management, driver productivity, delivery updates, customer satisfaction etc. If there were any mishaps in-transit such as product damage, vehicle break down, driver health issues, theft/fraud etc., the fleet managers across 11 distribution centers remained unaware. Everyday, they spent 2-3 hours at the end of the day to collect data from drivers, enter it into the system manually and then decide the status of every driver’s performance. This meant they had the opportunity to save 9000 hours a month!

Customer analytics

FoodServiceCo’s faced hindrances while making informed decisions about their customers and predicting their future orders. This was due to the lack of customer analytics. The metrics behind a customer’s satisfaction, revenue generation, product category etc. remained hidden. FoodServiceCo could not gauge a customer’s future orders and could not suggest complementary/supplementary products. If a customer were to expand from a small café to a well-managed restaurant, their orders would have changed. This was an opportunity for FoodServiceCo to offer more products. Customer Behavior analytics would lead to custom and faster product deliveries, enhanced customer loyalty and intelligent insights for marketing, sales and procurement teams. However, they experienced roadblocks in such scenarios.

Solution

Glimpse of the Power BI Dashboard