The world’s most successful companies know that work is never really done. Learn how Chainalytics helped one of the most popular quick service restaurant chains refine its well-established supply chain distribution network to meet future demand and plan for growth.
Each day, consumers all over the world place an order at this leading quick service restaurant. The organization proudly serves millions of people a multitude of products across thousands of global retail locations, offering dozens of different specialty beverages, merchandise, fresh food, and more. Utilizing its enormously complex supply chain, the organization strives to complete its mission of distributing and serving great products to their customers in a timely and efficient manner.
As a quick serve restaurant (QSR), the company has experienced several of the challenges affecting the industry as whole, which are creating a dramatic change in operational focus for QSRs and their supply chains. These challenges and opportunities for improvement include utilizing regional and local suppliers for fresh, farm-to-table ingredients, maintaining effective and efficient growth, employing core analytics capabilities to make adjustments as needed, adapting to new consumer requirements and demand flexibility, offering a multi-channel approach, and optimizing retail outlet operations.
Maintaining an operation of this magnitude requires a strong operational network and, as the organization continues to annually expand, constant re-evaluation and restructuring must be conducted to meet capacity demands. In order to facilitate a robust distribution and network strategy, the company partnered with Chainalytics for its supply chain expertise and proprietary methodology to determine the best plan of action to proactively prepare for these shifts in QSR supply chain management.
In order to support its dramatic growth, the QSR giant needed to design a supply chain network that enabled its continued journey towards a vastly broader market proposition which includes fast and fresh food offerings and fortified establishment in grocery and CPG channels. Its distribution breadth, projected volume growth, and anticipated levels of operation scale introduce new complex challenges requiring a proactive business plan. An assessment of the technology needed to support the supply chain initiatives was a crucial element to the designing an optimal network. Teaming with the client’s robust and seasoned group of supply chain professionals, Chainalytics assisted with the development of a network design strategy, a go-forward plan, 3PL utilization strategies, technology implementation initiatives, and an overall transformation roadmap.
The foundation of such a supply chain transformation was a network analysis of the organization’s existing infrastructure. To meet the needs of continued growth, Chainalytics and the client’s team members created a “fit for purpose” network design which sought to improve fulfillment responsiveness while avoiding added costs, optimize territory assignments, and increase the number of regional and local distribution centers. The redesigned network plan enabled volume growth, supported expanded product offerings, and mitigated rising costs and risks. Once implemented, retail responsiveness would improve by enabling increased delivery frequency while alleviating capacity pressure that would negatively impact service levels and cost-to-serve. By first optimizing for growth already experienced, the company could invest in the transformation strategy developed with Chainalytics that enabled additional growth for years to come.
To ensure the network remains highly efficient, a review and re-balance strategy was incorporated to allow the client to revisit the model periodically to support new growth and service objectives of the dynamic business. To position the organization for a successful transformation, the team provided a roadmap along with some executive meetings to develop organizational alignment. Chainalytics also used a unique scoring of critical business metrics to determine which project elements should receive higher priority in the implementation sequence.
Finally, Chainalytics, along with the client’s internal team, presented the leadership committee with the strategic roadmap as well as a governance program to assist with the development of a transformation office which would be 100% focused on the project. The roadmap required an experienced, full-time, committed leader in order to maintain the continuity in delivery of the multi-year program. The formula that Chainalytics recommended created a structured team approach with a charter, project plan, work-stream schedules, and communication plan to ensure all aspects of the transformation were transparent and fluid.
Chainalytics recommended success metrics and established a progress dashboard for advanced project measurement and status updates. Finally, Chainalytics experts and the QSR’s network strategy team expressed the importance of executive sponsorship across the business units as well as the total commitment from the organization’s top leadership and the willingness to be coached on change management. This massive and highly complex transformation will allow the client to become “best in class” for service and fulfillment while significantly lowering costs so millions of customers can continue to receive the products they love at affordable prices.
