About La Collezione
Firms under the management of La Collezione Ltd focus on gastronomy. This is a chain of high quality restaurants, buffets, catering companies, own food manufacturing and import and distribution of wine as well as a culinary school. The company operates from Prague and plans to increase the number of restaurants and other branches in the city.
Initial state of IT system and its limitations
Main operations IT system – restaurant system ASW Septim
Individual branches used the Septim software from ASW as the main ERP system. This software was used mainly for keeping track of client purchases (payments, pre-paid accounts etc.) and keeping track of stores (including orders, bills of material, material movements etc.).
Individual restaurants had various versions of Septim and there was no unification in methodology and work procedures.
Economic IT system
The enterprise was utilizing the services of an external accounting firm which had its own (and fairly uncommon) accounting IT system. This system was not integrated with the Septim system. Hence all documents had to be handled manually twice; once in Septim and then again in the accounting firm.
Main limitations of the initial state of IT
The main limitations of this state of IT were:
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Long delay between transfer of information from the ERP system into the accounting system and a resulting long delay of economic information for company management.
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Low level of support for financial leadership and control mechanisms.
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Insufficient speed and quality of dealing with information mismatch and errors.
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Lack of support for scheduled inventory-making at the individual establishments.
Business targets of the project
The project requirements and IT system specifications were:
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Unification of accounting and operations procedures: unification of purchasing methodology, manufacturing methodology, unification of storage management and material movement tracking.
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Acquiring total control over financial transactions and movement of funds: information about revenues, storage capacity, stores, orders, material movements and other requests need to be recorded and accessible on a daily basis.
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Implement company management based on financial indices: the owners, management and employees are managed using a system of financial tools – plans, budgets, forecasts (and their comparisons with daily revenues and margins), monthly/quarterly/annual scoreboards on the EBIDA level.
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Increase the number of customers per day, increase the revenues from existing customers and attracting new customers. Converting random customers to loyal clients. Control the quality of products and services in detail based on feedback. Set up active marketing and sales through mobile apps. Acquire corporate customers and establish relationships with corporate management for organizing events and meetings.
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Creation of an environment which would allow future business development: support the planned expansion in Prague, increase the number of branches to around 20 and further increase and expand the sales of in-house-produced and imported goods and increase the sales of consultation and training services.
Project schedule
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Q4 2017 – Preparation of the project: Internal specifications, business targets, general design of solution architecture
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Q4-Q1 2018 – Selection of supplier of new accounting and ERP system
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Q1-Q4 2018 – Project realization
The role of Vladimir Dvorak
Vladimir Dvorak was a part of this project as an external IT architect and project manager. His responsibilities were:
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Creation of business goals and a suggestion of future IT architecture
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Creation of specifications for the market research associated with selecting a new accounting and ERP system
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Creation of the project plan – breakdown of project into phases and subprojects, estimate of resource requirements (CAPEX and OPEX budgets, schedule, set up of internal team)
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Leadership throughout the IT system supplier selection process from market research to contract signing (licenses and implementation, support, financing)
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Hosting regular project meetings – internal, with individual suppliers, integration between ASW and Asseco Solution
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Support during IT system startup – setting up of an issue log, solution thereof and setting up training and re-training
Project outcomes
What was achieved during the project:
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Unification of the Septim system in all establishments to a single version, cloud implementation of Septim for central purchasing
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Unification of operations procedures and creation of a unified operations methodology – recipes, pricing, inventory, purchasing, consumption, cash flow, discounts
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Implementation of BI over the Septim system for regular operations reporting
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Implementation of the accounting and financial system IS Helios Orange into a Cloud server
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Integration of ASW Septim with Helios Orange
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Implementation of MS O365 – replacement of own email server and unification of versions of MS Office
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Update and modernization of operations infrastructure at the individual branches
Business goals were achieved – unification of accounting and operations methods, speeding up and automation of operations and accounting agendas via integration of Septim and Helios Orange and setting up of unified metrics. Further targets, like the planned expansion were unfortunately not met due to the outbreak of Covid-19 in the March of 2020.
Client contact
Ondrej Rakosnik, Co-owner
