Recently Nirula's, a pioneer in the family style restaurant business in India, went ahead with an implementation of SAP on Zensar's Zen Gourmet platform. Nirula's has consolidated its business processes onto a single SAP platform. An interview with Nirula's GM IT here to know more on the recipe

Advanced enterprise solutions infood service industry provide deeper insights into customer trends. The Food Industry, like any other fast moving goods industry, is looking at upgrading their technology inputs in order to ensure higher return on investment. They are looking at investing in advanced enterprise applications to understand the needs of the customer and especially to integrate their production and distribution cycle on one platform. According to Ernst and Young, IT Investment Trends Survey 2009, ERP continues to be top priority for CIOs. In today's evolving business environment, processing and distributing have a great deal of opportunity to leverage ERP to enhance revenue, productivity, and overall effectiveness. ERP solutions are touted to help companies increase operational efficiency, coordinate global supply chains, and modernize their warehouse and logistics functions. 

Nirula's, a major in the hospitality industry, and specially in the family style restaurant business in India set up the first outlet in Connaught Circus, New Delhi in 1940s. Nirula's operates restaurants under the brand name Nirula's, casual dining outlets called Potpourri and two hotels. The Group is present in over 60 locations across Delhi and NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab.

Arun Raj G is GM, IT at the renowned food and restaurant chain Nirula's. His career stints include Aptech Computer as well as Mc Donald's before he joined Nirula's in 2006. Here, he shares with Pratima H of CIOL the recipe of cooking SAP well inside a food business.

How rightly does ERP blend on the dining tables?

Last fifteen years, different software were in use for different departments, on a variety of platforms. So we went for ERP to have an integrated system. We have our own production units so it was important to have an integrated ERP solution. That's how we went ahead on shortlisting our options and thus selected SAP. It had the right production planning capabilities for our needs. Adopting SAP for consumer products is expected to fuel Nirula's growth by enabling greater enterprise wide visibility, improved operating margins, and process transparency whilst strengthening stakeholder, customer and partner relationships.

What importance does the end-user play in such IT decisions and how does a CIO ensure they are part of the process?

We put the user in spotlight throughout. A major hurdle in any technology decision is of user acceptance. At the evaluation stage itself, we included each and every department through two representatives from each department. We got major inputs from the end users. Based on the feedback received, and through involvement of business process owners from every department subsequently contributing to the study, we went ahead on improvements. In fact the first phase of demo, which solicited users to find gaps, were taken into account too.

And what expectations have you outlined so far?

Consolidating the system well was our first challenge, and the next challenge is ROI. We are looking at better production planning, reduction in wastage, better raw-material management, better inventory planning, and improved tracking of raw-material and finished goods.

The creation of the online platform has given us greater visibility in cash flows from procurement to sales. We now have increased clarity into food preferences across each of our restaurants. As a result, we can stock our restaurants suitably and drive promotions accordingly at each outlet.