Recently I had the privilege of reconnecting with Jim Sinur, former Gartner analyst and a legendary thought leader in the business process management realm. To illustrate the importance of real-time process discovery and intelligence and how their use can lead to increased revenue and an improved customer experience, Jim has written a blog post. His case study highlights how a major “quick serve” restaurant chain with over 10,000 store locations across 50 countries achieved end-to-end supply chain visibility to prevent customer dissatisfaction and lost revenue resulting from out-of-stock inventory and missed shipments.
Before the implementation, the organization was unable to track purchase orders through a myriad of siloed ERP systems and other IT applications. Because purchase order status could not be monitored across the supply chain in real-time, challenges and problems around order variations, shipping delays, shortages and overages could not be addressed and corrected before shipments were missed and critical inventory was out-of-stock. This resulted in significant revenue loss as well as disappointed customers.
Jim talks about how this global restaurant chain leveraged visual process intelligence to facilitate continuous monitoring of perishables and other items through the end-to-end procurement process. By implementing monitoring capabilities that track every process throughout the procurement cycle in real-time, the company was able to immediately identify and eliminate costly bottlenecks and delays before they negatively affected the customer experience.
The key takeaway highlighted in Jim’s analysis is that the combination of real-time process discovery and process intelligence translates directly into better business results. For the restaurant chain, the benefits extend beyond lower spoilage rates and reduced operational costs – perpetually in-stock, quality inventory prevents revenue loss and, most importantly, keeps customers happy and loyal. For a more detailed account of the case study, challenges and results, I encourage you to check out Jim’s piece on his blog.