“Working with Microsoft Great Plains conversion was much easier than I had anticipated. In just a few quick training sessions, I felt like I had been using Microsoft Great Plains forever.” - Jamie Lobb, Accounting Manager, Cowboy Red

Situation
Cowboy Red, a franchisee of Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, owns and operates four Red Robin restaurants in the Houston and Fort Worth, Texas, areas. Red Robin restaurants serve an imaginative selection of high-quality gourmet burgers in a family-friendly atmosphere, and have won numerous awards for Best Burger and Best Family Restaurant from independent newspapers and local reviewers in cities across North America.

From 1999 until 2003, Cowboy Red used Peachtree accounting software to help manage its financial activities. However, the company found significant shortcomings in the software, such as an inability to produce consolidated or longevity reporting. For instance, there was no ability to produce comparative restaurant reporting beyond one year; thus, the record of a report would expire one year beyond the date it was created. This required all reports to have a paper backup. In addition, Peachtree planned to discontinue support for the software version that Cowboy Red was using.

With four restaurants and more planned to open in the near future, Cowboy Red sought a solution that would help streamline its business processes and aid in the franchisee’s future expansion. Most important, Cowboy Red needed an accounting solution compatible with MenuLink Back Office Assistant. The franchisee uses two commercial software packages in the restaurant. Aloha software is used by employees to input orders, pay out the tickets, and track labor hours. Aloha then exports that information into Menulink, which combines the information received from Aloha with invoice information entered by restaurant managers directly into MenuLink. It also handles all the inventory needs for the restaurant and some of the basic in-house reporting.

The new solution needed to be able to import the information from MenuLink, record everyday cash sales, account for paid-in and paid-out transactions, and keep track of supplier invoices. Additionally, it needed to be capable of producing consolidated reporting that would make it possible to measure the financial performance of all restaurants—together, individually, by location, by volume, or by whatever the particular needs may be.

Solution
Cowboy Red elected to take part in a pilot implementation for a franchise-tailored electronic accounting solution. Business decision makers at Red Robin and Cowboy Red  evaluated solutions by PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Epicor, Peachtree, QuickBooks, and Microsoft.

Cowboy Red and Red Robin Gourmet Burgers chose Microsoft Business Solutions GP software as the franchise's new accounting system because of its ability to easily integrate data from Menu Link, its robust out-of-the-box functionality, its detailed reporting capability, and the overal value it provided for its price.

In September 2003, they begin the implementation of Dynamics GP for all of Cowboy Red's restaurants. "I had heard from others that changing accounting programs could be extremely challenging; such as stories of companies experiencing lost information, and days or weeks of hair-pulling frustration," says Jamie Lobb, Accounting Manager for Cowboy Red. "The Microsoft Dynamics GP conversion was much easier than I had anticipated. In just a few quick training sessions, I left like I had been using Dynamics GP forever."

Benefits
Within the first few months after deployment, Cowboy Red experienced a 20 percent increase in the accounting department's productivity, eliminating the need to hire additional employees. The ease of use and efficiency with with reports can be produced gives managers more time to analyze financial numbers and act on discrepancies before they turn into larger problems. Microsoft Dynamics GP easily integrates with other software, such as MenuLink, so Cowboy Red has been able to streamline business proccesses, thereby aiding in the franchisee's expansion plans.

Increased Time Savings Improves Productivity by 20 Percent
Lobb estimates that Microsoft Great Plains saves her two days’ worth of time per week. Processes that previously had to be conducted manually, such as importing daily sales entries, inventory adjustments, paid-in and paid-out entries, and invoices, are now automated.

“Every month, I have to prepare reconciliations, a process in which the differences between the bank statements and the accounting system’s statements are reconciled,” says Lobb. “In the past, it took me two and a half to three days to prepare these reconciliations. With Microsoft Great Plains, it takes me only a day and a half to complete the reports.”

Because Cowboy Red is currently a small chain, Lobb works not only as an accounting manager, but also as a payroll and human resources assistant. Despite the franchisee's plan to open two additional restaurants in the near future, with the time savings that Lobb has gained with the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics GP, she won't need to hire an assistant. "Using the old system, I would have had to hire an assistant, because there just isn't enough time in a week to get all the necessary work done," she said. "Because of the increased productivity we experience with Dynamics GP, we won't have to hire an assistant for a long time to come."

Enhanced Reporting Helps Managers Quickly Indentify Financial Discrepancies
With the help of Dynamics GP, Lobb can easily run comparison reports,including coparisons of one restaurant to another, the Forth Worth restaurants to the Houston restaurants, and this year's financial performance to last year's performance. As Cowboy Red continues to expand its operations, this reporting functionality will serve as a great tool to compare the future store openings to those of the past.

The flexibility of Dynamics GP reporting is an essential asset to our business," says Lobb. "what is great about this reporting is that it takes information from each store and places it side-by-side. This helps the director of operations act more quickly if there is a high-cost issue in one of the restaurants."

Flexibility and Ease of Use Produces Results for Novices and Professionals
For Cowboy Red, an attractive feature of Microsoft Dynamics GP was the fact that Lobb could pick and choose which accounting modules she wanted to have. The company already has a solution for inventory management, for instance, so to acquire a system with that module would have been a waste of money. " A lot of the systems I evaluated lacked what we were looking for or included more than we needed,” says Lobb. “You couldn’t pick and choose which modules within the system you wanted to use. With Microsoft Great Plains, you are only paying for what you need.”

Another attractive feature of Microsoft Great Plains is its ease of use. “Microsoft Great Plains is easy to use out of the box,” says Lobb. “It can produce great results for novices or professional accountants. I’ve had minimal accounting training, but Microsoft Great Plains is so intuitive that I’ve had no trouble understanding how it works.”