How technology plays role in Big Chill’s success

MANILA, Philippines - Technology played a significant role in refining our way of doing business, according to Daniel Francisco, the person behind the sudden expansion of Big Chill, one of the country’s fastest-growing beverage chains.

In 2011, the 18-year old company and its 39 stores were acquired by food producer and trader AgriNurture Inc., where Francisco is vice president for Business Development and Strategic Initiatives. The new management was surprised with the manual process used in its store operations, with less than one-fourth of its stores equipped with a point-of-sale system (POS).

“Only 25 percent of the entire store population had a point-of-sale system, and this was only because the malls where they were located required it. For the rest, sales had to be manually jotted down and tallied, which led to a slow turnaround of information,” shared Francisco.“If you would ask how many mango shakes were sold, they will get back to you two days later with the numbers.”

For businesses involved with fresh produce such as Big Chill, immediate access to inventory data is necessary in making critical supply chain decisions. “It was a bit of a challenge for us. Communication was very slow, and we had hard time getting information. We started thinking of how we can solve that problem and this is when we discovered PLDT Cloud POS, said Francisco. “It’s an impressive solution because what it was able to do was to put technology into our stores, allowing us to take advantage of the Cloud.”

The Cloud POS is one of PLDT’s cost-effective, cloud-based business solutions, which enables business owners to keep track of sales and inventory data from all their branches in real-time and wherever they are, as long as they have an Internet connection.

By adopting this system, Big Chill was able to improve its efficiency and made its operations much faster and run in a cost-efficient manner. It has allowed them to become more competitive, allowing them to respond better to the demands of the market, provide improved customer service, and subsequently grow the business.

“We were able to grow the business from 39 stores to our current number of over 64 stores all over northern Luzon and nearby provinces. From less than 25 percent, we’ve grown our POS solution to around almost 50 percent,” added Francisco. “It’s helped a lot and we plan to continue this on, especially right now as we take the next step in growing the business, which is already franchising. We are looking to roll-out web POS to all franchise stores, beginning with new ones opening this year.”

These cloud-based business solutions have helped improve the company’s efficiency and productivity, and have allowed them to focus on their core business. Francisco emphasized, “PLDT’s innovative business solutions have made a significant impact in helping us grow.”

These business solutions from PLDT enable companies to increase revenue opportunities, enhance business efficiency of both front and back-end operations, but at a lower total cost of ownership, assuring investment protection as they expand in the future. These are especially useful for small-medium enterprises, which are considered the quickest adopters of the Cloud, since they can scale the technology according to how they grow their business.

This is part of PLDT’s commitment in supporting the growth of local enterprises, with technology to help them automate and streamline workflow processes resulting in higher efficiency and lower cost.

“In today’s digital era, enterprises need to innovate in the way they manage their operations and the manner in which they interact with their customers to stay ahead in their industry,” said PLDT president and CEO Napoleon Nazareno. “Our suite of cloud-based solutions represents our commitment of supporting the growth of local enterprises in the country, and thereby contributing to the growth of the nation.”