Summary

Oakhouse Foods (Oakhouse) runs a network of twenty franchisees, selling and delivering freshly frozen meals and desserts mainly to the elderly, through most of England and parts of Ireland. They have consolidated all their franchisees on a single Enterprise by HansaWorld system. Since they started to use Enterprise by HansaWorld they have reduced the number of franchisees from 75 to 20, and each franchisee has seen 25-50% growth per year. Enterprise by HansaWorld has enabled Oakhouse to change its business model, now including their own warehousing, new business and geographical areas.

Key Challenges

- Find a system that can support the franchise business model

Project Objectives

- To keep the investment in systems and IT staff as low as possible, yet making sure they had the necessary tools they needed to manage the whole franchise operation effectively - Removing any rekeying of data and making the system as easy as possible for users

Solution and Services

Enterprise by HansaWorld (Accounts, Stock, Sales and Purchase Orders, Quotations, Wide Area Networking, CRM, Calendar, Task Manager) for 9 concurrent users at Headquarters. Franchisee solution for around 100 users of the same modules as HQ. Vaughan Data Systems implemented the solution with support from HansaWorld.

Why Enterprise by HansaWorld

It represents an unusually strong fit for Oakhouse, as a result of the balance of: - Ease of use - Performance over a wide-area networking, allowing a single server to be used - Scalability - Customisation to precise requirements offered by HAL (Hansa Application Language) - Flexibility derived from detailed functionality and option to customise - Speed of response to new requirements by VDS, the reseller - Integration of CRM and ERP - Low total cost of ownership.

Implementation Highlights

- The standardisation of hardware, software and telephony have reduced the need to high IT skills - Oakhouse has required ultra-rapid deployment of Enterprise by HansaWorld solutions at new operations and they have managed to achieve this together with Vaughan Data Systems - System can handle a weekly load of 15,000 orders, 9,000 reports without serious performance issues

System Replaced

Each franchisee had its own, low-end system, mostly different.