BURGER BUY-IN

Crafting the business case for a new platform by leading future users in a co-designed journey of exploration and reflection

Client Introduction

This quick service dining brand is reinvesting in a new platform to upgrade their supply chain to be more efficient and digitize the interactions for better visibility, reporting, and reduction of waste. This company is a major player in the quick service dining industry serving millions of people daily across 14,000 domestic locations.

Problem

The project only includes funding for the logistics partners, suppliers, and manufacturers. Project scope does not currently include individual store locations. In addition, franchisee owners would be financially responsible for installing and implementing the platform in their locations. How would we motivate a franchisee owner to pay for a platform they did not request nor understand? Our core problem was to collect quantitative and qualitative data to support the implementation of the new platform within the store locations. This involved collecting information about where efficiencies could be implemented and motivating franchisee owners to pay for the new platform to be implemented in their locations.

Solution

The solution was to create an empathic series of workshops with a sample group of franchisees.

The objective of these workshops were to:

Invite and hear from franchisees the issues and problems they and their staff encounter that are wasteful, frustrating and generally take them away from serving their customers.
Uncover the processes and the time spent on inefficient tasks that could be further explored for potential savings
Create a business case using both the qualitative feedback and the quantitative numbers to present to upper management as justification for the platform implementation

Results

Over 7 weeks we conducted 5 workshops that moved the franchisee mindset from initial skepticism to evangelism of the platform. Including the franchisee voice in the process enabled them to co-design their future state leading them to become advocates of the system. Time and financial savings were outlined that could potentially return hours back to restaurant staff thereby increasing the location’s profitability. The design series was so effective that franchisees penned a letter to corporate requesting that the platform be implemented as soon as possible.

A comprehensive research deck was submitted to the project sponsors highlighting qualitative quotes directly from franchisees and financial insights to explore further with the corporate finance team. A franchisee sponsored letter was drafted to company executives to further amplify the need for the platform and share the franchisees' high level of commitement to the implementation.

My Role

In addition to building and facilitating the workshops, I led the data synthesis across all aspects of the project. This included creating a data categorization method, transposing qualitative quotes, highlighting time and process savings opportunities and outlining a strategy on how to bring the data to life within the business case.

What went well

A profound success was the trust built between the team and the franchisees. At the beginning of this interaction the team began as outsiders to the supply chain ecosystem. Through these regular, open, and honest collaborations, camaraderie and trust was built through the co-design process that enabled the franchisees to trust in the outcome we were crafting and that we were aligned with them in making their restaurants more effective and profitable.

What challenges were overcome

A challenge we encountered was a difference in the terminology used to refer to processes and activities within the restaurant. For example, we used the term rotation compliance while the franchisees used inventory. We overcame this by realigning around these terms early and often to ensure a consistent reference point and language for our project.

Visual artifacts

Examples of workshop layouts

Disclaimer: Images have been altered to prevent legibility to preserve client confidentiality

Workshop 1

This first workshop outlined the purpose of the engagement, collaborating on meeting norms, exposing stakeholders to the scope of the project and gathering their concerns, comments, and reflections.

Workshop 1 shareout

This distillation of the franchisee voice served as a talking point to showcase back to franchisees what we heard were their concerns and how those concerns were grouped together.

Workshop 2

In workshop 2 high level themes were reverberated back to ensure what was heard was correct. This enabled trust to be built between the facilitators and the stakeholders. We also explored the necessary processes, characters, and pain points experienced when conducting routine tasks around frozen and fresh food.

Workshop 3

Workshop 3 included a section on what was heard as well as a brief overview of what new technology could assist in making processes more efficient for franchisees and their staff. Recovering stock and the process for crediting expired food was explored to illuminate the pain points around these tasks.

Workshop 4

This workshop was a sense check on what we had heard from all previous workshops. This meant reviewing processes for missing pieces, diving deeper into numerical metrics that may inform financial savings, and beginning to quantify process improvements. Additionally we began to craft a compelling story that would make this data come to life.

Workshop 5

This workshop served a dual purpose. The first part was to reflect on the workshop series and a company conference where franchisees were able to interact with all aspects of the new platform. The second portion of the workshop focused on the path forward, most specifically what next steps did the franchisees want to see from the data and business case information we collected.