My Story

The ‘ Corner’ Is On The IT Road

They sell delicious and they know how to sell it profitably because they add that extra topping of IT. Pizza Corner is, beyond doubt, worthy of imitation. ANOOP SEQUEIRA CEO, GFA Pvt Ltd

BenefIT / January 2007 / 19

C M Y K My Story

ay back in 1996, when very few people actually knew Wwhat a pizza was, a young entrepreneur from abroad thought of selling it in India. He came to , the land of idlis and dosas, and did a market survey to learn how viable it was to sell pizzas in India. The study indicated that he should never venture into the pizza business here. He threw the report away and took the risk of opening the first outlet of Pizza Corner in the heart of the city. Today, Pizza Corner has a presence in fifty locations all over India and is spreading widely through the franchising route. Well, the credit actually goes to Fred Mouawad, the chairman and CEO of the Geneva-based GFA (Global D Venkata Subramaniam, Assistant Vice President-IT Franchise Architects). Pizza Corner, a true Indian brand, is now a part of GFA Chennai. But the beginning was tough. successful in the country. India Pvt Ltd and has a rare story to “The lifestyle in India at that time From Chennai, the company slowly, share with us, about how the brand was totally different and no one had moved to Bangalore and Hyderabad became synonymous with pizzas. even thought of this kind of business. It and also embarked on franchising with was very difficult for us to gain a a few more outlets. Expanding the base foothold in the market, as pizza was Sequeira talks of the tremendous Today, Pizza Corner has a presence in still a foreign food and more of a snack growth in the last three years. “We most big and small cities in the country. for people in India. But we got the first- gained a lot of attention through Within a span of eight to ten months mover advantage,” says Anoop franchising. I think retail, in general, is after the initial launch, the company Sequeira, CEO, GFA India, the man who booming in the country since the past managed to open four new outlets in played a big role in making the brand three years. More and more people are getting into the ‘shopping-mall culture’. Accordingly, we, at Pizza Corner, have re-engineered our processes and tried to do a lot of innovation. We do considerable work on R&D, which helps us enter smaller towns. Now we are expanding at a rapid pace.” “Today pizza has become a convenience food. We see a five-year- old child coming to Pizza Corner with her grandmother. That means that even the older generation has accepted it. I won’t say it will replace our regular diet but it is a good alternative and people like to have pizza two to three times a month. Earlier, it would have been once in a month or once in two months. That has changed. All the pizza companies have seen growth in the last few years.” Though the company started out of India, the people at Pizza Corner do their best to give an international look to the outlets. There are various dine-

20 / January 2007 / BenefIT

C M Y K My Story

Changes are made to pizzas. It is being used in a very the menu annually by innovative way. If a customer calls to Business continuity and adding more and place an order, the call comes to the disaster recovery more innovative call centre in that particular city, which items. Instead of is connected to all the outlets through Nobody knows when disaster will strike—whether resting on its laurels, LAN/WAN. It is a leased line circuit. something as simple as an unprecedented server crash the company tries There is a 16-seater call-centre in or as big as a fire. But Pizza Corner can ensure that they have solutions in place to recover easily from any to give its Bangalore. The duty of the person who kind of disaster. For example, they can use options like customers a total picks up the call is to write down the mobile PBX to make sure that their call centre dining experience phone number, address and location functioning can be easily resumed even if the physical by reducing the of the customer. Once this information equipment is affected, colocation of data repository cost and increasing is recorded in the computers at the call (which is important as it will hold all customer the quality. centre, the software automatically information) at an Internet data centre or off-site Above all, Pizza transfers the order to the relevant location, and so on. Refer to article “Back in 60 seconds” in BenefIT September 2006 Corner is not just a pizza to processes the order for for details. vendor. It tries to create a delivery. bond with the community All the outlets have the required by initiating various social and number of computer systems, in , delivery and express community activities. ‘Food for Good’ connected by Local Area Networks outlets located at shopping malls, is one such initiative launched in 1998. highways and fuel stations. A speciality A part of the profits of Pizza Corner is the ‘see-through kitchen’ concept, go to the ‘Food for Good’ fund which ensures complete hygiene. that will be used for the benefit of Pay using SMS less privileged children. These The ‘pizza’ innovations children are invited to inaugurate Pizza Corner can utilise the power of The mission of Pizza Corner is, ‘Better the new dine-in restaurants too. SMS to enable their customers to pay pizza through quality and innovation’ “We prefer inviting these their bills through SMS. The company can avail of this service from various and in view of that, it does a lot of children instead of calling a mobile payment solution providers and innovation on the product front. celebrity or a famous personality. It let their customers enjoy simple Conizza, the pizza in a cone, is one such is just a simple belief that gives us a SMS-based payments. example. “It was the next level of lot of satisfaction, and at the same innovation that helped us capture the time, offers a rare opportunity to the imagination of the consumer and children,” says Sequeira. (LAN). Thus, the order from the call- brought us enormous sales,” says centre reaches the server in the Sequeira. Driven by IT appropriate outlet in real-time. The He believes that innovation is a key Pizza Corner claims to be a technology- kitchen printer will immediately factor for any retail business. Pizza driven company. In fact, it is. Its Guest generate the printout so the staff can Corner offers ‘desi’ pizzas with a Care Centre (GCC) is definitely an start making the pizza. The server will different set of Indian toppings because innovative idea, which helps it keep give another print command to the it believes that, ‘When in India, do as ahead of the competition. 40 per cent of ‘delivery printer’ to alert the delivery the Indians do’. the business comes from delivery boys. The person who delivers the pizza and Pizza Corner has set up call- updates the call-centre while leaving. centres in Bangalore, Chennai and This helps the people in the call-centre Hyderabad, to take care of the to answer any queries related to the Supple Chain Management orders. status of the order. SCM might be very helpful for Pizza Corner “The GCC is the major focus “This system helps us to achieve the since making something like a pizza will of our business. We have a ‘one 39-minute guarantee. The IT team in require quite a few specialised ingredients number’ concept for the city Pizza Corner focuses mainly on the call- which only specific suppliers may be able to and it involves a lot of IT centre as it needs to be up all the time. provide. It would also be difficult to stock deployments,” says D. Venkata ingredients for long lest they perish. It is At the end of the day, all the outlets important to maintain the flow of the right Subramanian, assistant vice have to send a report to the GCC, which amount of the proper ingredients at the right president-IT. helps us to calculate the sales of each time, to all the outlets/kitchens, and an Pizza Corner makes use of PoS day,” says Subramanian. SCM solution can help ensure that. software to manage the delivery of Pizza Corner has been using this

BenefIT / January 2007 / 21

C M Y K My Story

software as well but this is in Pizza Corner considers document the process of being management as a crucial part of its Securing premises upgraded as the number of business. It has a franchise ticket system and diners outlets and employees has to erase the communication gap grown tremendously. The between the company and the A good restaurant attracts people from all walks upgraded version is going franchisees. This software avoids all the of life. Security is especially important in places like Pizza Corner’s dine-in outlets, which will to be a complete HR confusion created while handling attract innumerable college students. After the package with all the details things manually. It enables the Jessica Lal case, security has become a very about each and every maintenance of all the records and important issue. Pizza Corner can consider IP- employee. This will include documentation. based CCTV and security systems, so the attendance system of the There is document management managers can login and check all the sites whole country. “This will help software for internal communication using the Web browser on their laptop. us to analyse the performance of also. Subramanian explains, “It records each employee so that we can find all the official communication between out the appropriate person to handle software right from the beginning. It is everything,” says Subramanian. in the process of upgrading the PoS. Pizza corner plans to implement The company is also planning for a ‘site selection software’ in the near Locate and target national-level GCC, which will help it future to help choose the right location to have one common contact number for new restaurant openings. This will Pizza Corner can also Google- for all the cities in the country. maximise market share and per-unit Earth tag their website to help Pizza Corner does not have performance and also lessen the their tech-savvy customers to easily find the nearest outlet immediate plans to enable online cannibalisation between outlets. The in a city. ordering. “We have tried online software will enable the company to ordering a few years ago. But the fact is determine which store has to be closed that people do not want to order food and which is to be renovated. Though the employees. This helps us to have a items online. Even if they order it online, the information about the location is quality management system. The they call to tell us that they have placed provided manually, the software communication becomes centralised an order through e-mail. So, that is a ensures all the data is in place for proper and the efficiency of employees waste of money and time,” says analysis. increases.” Subramanian. “This will give us a fair idea about Pizza Corner’s next aim is to move Another major project is the the location and its pros and cons. Thus towards a paperless office and as a part implementation of an ERP package. It we will be able to boost our knowledge of this effort, it is going to make use of is almost in the final stages and the of the market. In fact, we believe in intranet applications. software will be functional from evidence management. We will not take January. Right now, Pizza Corner is any decision without evidence,” says Future plans planning to implement the finance and Subramanian. The people at Pizza Corner are inventory modules and to implement determined to make the brand the the whole package later on. world’s best-managed pizza chain. Now Subramanian believes that this will help they are going to smaller towns in the the company to have all data on the country. Sequeira is pretty confident fingertips and thus to make quick about the future. “We want to increase decisions. “No one will be able to move the number of outlets. The location is a forward in business without data. We key factor. We are finding out ‘A’ grade believe this software will take our locations across the country to open organisation to the next level,” he says. new outlets and are striving to touch There are also plans to make use of 100 outlets by March. At the same time, VoIP (Voice over IP) for internal we are focusing more on the quality communication between the head aspect. We do not want to get into any office, outlets and area offices to make price wars. The most important thing is sure that the communication level is innovation. We are always hungry for fast. “This will help us to cut our phone innovation. That has, and will be, the bills,” remarks Subramanian. differentiator.”  Pizza Corner makes use of HR —N Radhika, BenefIT Bureau

22 / January 2007 / BenefIT

C M Y K