Case Study: Panera Bread manages growing data pantry with TIBCO EBX Software
Panera Bread believes that good food, food you can feel good about, can bring out the best in all of us. It has over 2,000 bakery-cafes in the US, fully baked with e-commerce, kiosk ordering, and integrated orders across systems, streamlining the restaurant experience for customers and employees.
Business Challenge
While building new systems to manage e-commerce, kiosk ordering, inventory, and food costs, Panera Bread needed a “single source of truth” central repository of all its data.
Transformation
TIBCO EBX software serves as that single system, bringing together all of Panera Bread’s data assets so it can easily change menu items based on customer feedback, resulting in an increase in revenue.
“EBX software is helping Panera Bread increase revenue by allowing flexibility of our menu, so when the business comes up with a great menu idea, we can say, yes, instead of saying no”. —Noel Nitecki, Director of Enterprise Services.
Savings in Time and Money
Before EBX software, the company had several teams managing multiple systems that had to be merged to be useful, requiring a lot of extra steps and manual work. These manual processes and handoffs meant a heightened risk of errors and mistakes. As Panera continued to grow, the situation was unsustainable.
According to Nitecki, “Having a single source of truth has been very valuable to us. As we’ve expanded our menu, as we’ve expanded the number of cafes we have, it’s been very critical that we can manage data in a more simplified manner.”
With all of the data pulled into the EBX platform, Panera Bread could perform data validations upfront, ensure data quality from the beginning, and catch data problems before they led to issues that could cause poor customer experiences.
Business-user control, less risk, flexibility
Traditionally, Panera’s legacy systems required IT to manage the data. The main goal of implementing a master data management system was to put data ownership into the hands of the business, allowing business users to make changes when needed, including to allow new product ideas. The change decreased manual handoffs and eliminated the need to wait for IT to update data.
Now, IT can add a data attribute in EBX software and push it downstream the next day. The company has become more flexible and agile, able to accommodate increased demands of the business. Making changes is especially important because the restaurant changes menu five times a year, adding favorite seasonal and regional items known as “celebrations.” It now relies on EBX software to ensure seamless rollouts of these celebrations to delight customers.
Get in touch with TIBCO, or visit their retail solution page for more details.
