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Combination of food and technology: Feastogether uses Ares ArgoERP to build NT$10 billion catering enterprise


“ERP is the most important fundamental infrastructure to achieve Just in Time!” I-Hang Chen, the general manager of Feastogether put it. Chen started with financial report output to share the performance of electronic operation that Feastogether reached along the way. He recalled, “Before ArgoERP implementation, two months were taken to finish financial reports though our base of electronic operation has been established to some extent and many decisions might be postponed unintentionally. Thanks to ArgoERP, our monthly income statement can be finished by 10th each month. The efficiency of information output are improved so that our managers can know production progress and make the best decision in time for our group.”

The Secrets of Feastogether Growth: Create Values and Solve Problems

Feastogether Co., founded on 1971 as Fuli Restaurant, has been established for over forty five years. In 2015, the company had more than NT$2.3 billion (about US$71million) in revenues and up to 3.5 million in the number of customers. The secret to the growth is that the company has kept its spirit in providing higher-quality, more-thoughtful services. With continuously strengthening internal operation process while enhancing staff quality and efficiency, Feastogether aims to bring customer happiness and achieve its missions, which are to serve customers feasts, to treat them as hosts back home, and to better their life with Feastogether.

I-Hang Chen, the general manager of Feastogether shared electronic operations of restaurant industry and manufacturing management experiences.

Software choice dilemma: Cost or stability of service provider?

When referring to the early stage of electronic operations, I-Hang Chen, general manager of the company, said that Feastogether began with using another ERP product; however, its system maintenance and usage were affected due to operational problems at the ERP company shortly after implementing the product, and this resulted in the wasting of manpower and time. Followed by the lesson, Feastogether decided that its ERP system provider should not only offer an applicable software but run a large-scale and stable business in this field. Because the information system implementation lays the foundation of sustainable development, the group have to grow without worries by a well-served ERP team.

When talking about the process of the ERP system provider selection, Yu-Xuan Wang added that Feastogether regarded flexibility and user-friendly experience as the system standards in the final stage; meanwhile, the evaluation included whether the service team was positive, what size the company was, and how stable it run business. Thus, Ares ArgoERP with its consultant team was chosen, as its performances in every aspect are excellent.

Change: upgrade the frontline operation

“The biggest challenge of implementing information system into restaurant business is how to change the frontline workers unfamiliar with the ERP system and to make them accept systematic management”, said An-Xiu Zheng, an experienced consultant responsible for ArgoERP implementation of Feastogether. Regarding this point, Yu-Xuan Wang said that to avoid frontline workers’ passive attitude in the early stage, all management-level workers learned the system operation first to train branch staff every day and share with them the advantage of the system usage: to improve efficiency, to accelerate the operation process, and to effectively achieve the group goal of informatization.

Besides mutual communication, the user-friendly and flexible system played an important role. Dean Tsai, the senior manager of Ares, mentioned that adjustment between real execution process and system setup surely happened when the system was operated in frontline working areas. The integration of system functions and real operations through feedback collection and operation improvement is essential for the best performance of electronic operations in the enterprise.

Feastogether insists on on-site cooking in the restaurant, to ensure freshness and quality.

The key to keeping food fresh and with quality

Feastogether established central kitchen in 2012 to keep food quality for each branch. Besides, the company implemented a production system to have material import, production, requisition, and inventory processed by label management and semi-finished food would be sent to branches to cook. For this purpose, ArgoERP is the best tool to precisely control the volume of food import and export, and the works in process.

Moreover, Feastogether insisted that food should cook on the spot to food with the best texture and quality, which is different from other catering companies that cook food in central kitchens and heat it in restaurants. Taking stewed beef with red wine for example, the beef slices are only pickled and cut in the central kitchen and still cook in the restaurant. Cooking on the spot is the freshest! Moreover, Sashimi, a popular dish, was also divided in the central kitchen, sent boneless meats to the restaurant, and sliced by cooks on the spot. Feastogether insists to offer customers the most delicious food by the central kitchen with ArgoERP in control of each dish quality.

Feastogether implements of information technology solutions to enhance workflow efficiency.

The assistant manager of administrative department at Feastogether Zhong-Yan Wu said that the process of delivering semi-finished products to branches for cooking is complicated and generated huge information, so errors would happen if the company only relied on manual operations and hardcopies. As a result, through ArgoERP, the volume of import and export could be precisely controlled to correspond with correct information about purchasing, inventory, and production to make system adaptive to when any process is changed.

About ArgoERP

Ares is the only listed ERP software company in Taiwan. ArgoERP modules have underlying architecture applied flexibly and built-in standard functions, so it could be adjusted to fit different characteristics of industries, such as traditional, construction, chemistry, production, and service industry, to improve the business process and the efficiency of overall resource utilization in the most economical way. It is applicable to multi-company, multi-factory, multi-currency, multi-profit center and multi-program management and is sufficient to meet the demand of enterprises in the international competition.

To cope with the policy that the domestic listed companies should adopt IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) accounting system, Ares has launched its IFRS solution. Being the first government-acknowledged ERP supplier, Ares has accumulated many successful IFRS cases. Elastic solutions, including the complete system replacement and the combination of different general ledger systems or reporting tools, are also provided to save human costs, lift operating speed, reduce errors and adjustment range of the statements in the future. The implementation of IFRS corresponding solution could help enterprises not only decrease the affection of the operation side, but enhance more competitiveness for them to seize opportunities. Ares recently won eleven certificates for IFRS from Taiwan’s Ministry of Commerce of Taiwan government.

More introduction about ArgoERP:https://argoerp.ares.com.tw/en/

About Ares

  • First Taiwan-based software company to be listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) and has been dedicated to IT services for thirty five years
  • Professional information management system provider of greater China, specializing in research and development technology and system integration, and provides informatization services from single products to total solutions for main service clients throughout financial, government, industrial and commercial enterprises
  • Certified regional partner of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) in Taiwan
  • First government-acknowledged IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) ERP solution provider, first Oracle partner in Taiwan and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner
  • Largest provider of Manufacturing Execution System in Taiwan LED industry
  • Top player of the Taiwan foreign exchange and core banking solution provider, which even has been mentioned in Gartner reports

Ares introduction: http://bit.ly/1BNIMVD
LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/1Br5OCM