Tanya Gilchrist, Director of Systems and Integration of Rock Paper Scissors
On what's important, strong foundations and improving systems.
QSR Media: What makes you excited about your position?
Tanya Gilchrist: Possibilities! I really love the whole process of streamlining and integrating. Of looking at systems and processes across the whole business and figuring out how to make things work together better. From what is the best shelf in the fridge to store a certain item right through to complex business intelligence - it’s all important. I love seeing the improvements as it impacts on customer experience, staff workflow and management systems.
QSR Media: What 3 goals are you focussed on?
Gilchrist: At the moment I’m focussing mostly on the areas of franchisee support; training; and supply chain management for our core lines. We’ve always placed importance on having strong foundations to support our future growth. It’s one thing to sell stores but long term sustainability for the brand and our franchisees requires more than market demand.
QSR Media: What long-term changes are you planning on?
Gilchrist: We are doing a refresh of our brand image at the moment – new packaging, new uniforms and a new look and feel for our stores so while that’s much more Hayley’s domain as Director of Development, it’s exciting to be part of.
We are including back of house financial systems as part of our franchisee support package so our franchisees can focus on running their business with the benefit of having current, accurate financial information to make the best decisions for their business without the headache of needing to do it. There are also big benefits to us as franchisors with better information coming to us about the stores. We have a good BI system so I’m working through improving this to give better information to both us and franchisees.
QSR Media: What are your key business philosophies?
Gilchrist: We’ve always considered that our long term plan would include investment or acquisition so our key philosophy is ensuring that all decisions we make consider our three customer groups- retail consumers, franchisees and potential acquirers.
QSR Media: What previous positions prepared you for this one and how?
Gilchrist: All the jobs I’ve had have probably given me something from my very first job as a teenager washing dishes and waitressing which gave me great perspective on frontline hospitality customer service skills. More recently though as CEO of a not for profit organisation I honed my skills in systems and integration. Aged care is highly legislated and you need great systems to make it work well. I did a lot of work with IT companies and we developed some fantastic technology integrations that resulted in significant time savings. I’ve been able to apply a lot of that knowledge to the work flow in our stores to improve efficiency. The not for profit sector also provided me with a good grounding in the financial management of a small business. Every dollar counts in both sectors!
