The Challenge
A national fast-food restaurant chain with over 3,500 restaurants, serving over 3 million customers a day, started a pilot program to enhance the customer experience. To achieve this, the restaurant management implemented a new point-of-sale (POS) and customer ordering system, including a mobile solution, and refreshed the technology at all of its physical restaurant locations, both corporate- and franchisee-owned.
While the corporate-owned stores had similar processes and systems in place and successfully piloted the changes, the franchisee-owned locations’ processes, systems, and desire to change varied greatly. The restaurant organization needed to create a scalable and efficient implementation approach to launch the in-flight pilot program in franchised locations, build credibility with franchisees, and demonstrate the return on investment, as the pilot program was rolling out.
Our Approach
Sendero partnered with the restaurant to develop a comprehensive roadmap to meet the initiatives of the already-launched new customer enhancement program, including the necessary plans to drive desired behavior changes within the franchisee community. Our eight-week assessment began by interviewing more than 30 stakeholders and reviewing existing documentation in the restaurant organizational structure, to gain better understanding of the program’s progress, level of commitment to employees, success criteria, and concerns.
Our analysis discovered the following roadblocks to the core program:
- Core program team was under-resourced and misaligned with skills and capabilities
- Team was unclear on roles and responsibilities, creating uncertainty of ownership
- Team had limited visibility into parallel activities taking place
After we brought these findings to the client’s attention, the client extended the scope of our work to include creation of missing project plans and charters for more than 30 work streams.
