How Fourth addressed Jardine Restaurant Group’s labour management woes with its forecasting solutions

JRG achieved its ROI within just the first month of deploying Fourth’s system.

The Jardine Restaurant Group (JRG) has successfully made Pizza Hut and KFC iconic QSR brands. But it is no secret that success, even for iconic brands like these household favourites, does not come without challenges. 

One of the pain points of these JRG restaurants was labour management, a crucial area in operations for the leading restaurant group in Asia, with 900 outlets and more than 27,000 employees in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Vietnam, and Myanmar. 

Labour is one of the most expensive costs for any operator, and JRG recognised the importance of addressing its concerns in this area. Amongst their challenges were the time-consuming and manual labour calculations by store managers to schedule employees, inefficient and lack of central control using spreadsheets to forecast labour demand, and absence of an automated process to manage compliance rules. 

“We had to find a hospitality tech partner that would be able to personalise the solution to our business needs,” shares Ran Zou, senior transformation manager at Jardine Mathison, the parent company of JRG.

For a big group like JRG, addressing pain points that eat up a significant portion of the operating costs must be done at the soonest possible time. Thus, they looked for a partner that could provide a solution with a speedy rollout, competitive price, and a hands-on team. Then came Fourth, a trusted provider of end-to-end, best-in-class technology and services for the hospitality, leisure, and retail industries for two decades now, that committed to complete the rollout within five months — and delivered. 

The solution

JRG decided to use Fourth’s workforce management solution, a technology designed to help restaurants forecast, schedule, and engage with their teams in real-time. 

Fourth’s solution helps organisations accurately forecast labour demand and cost and remove complexity in creating schedules by providing accurate labour demand calculation and forecasting. This technology also allows restaurants to manage real-time scheduling and provides them with business intelligence through easy-to-read analytics.

With an automated and data-driven forecasting tool, restaurants are able to see exactly how many staff members are needed to meet the demand, including for non-revenue-generating activities like preparation and clean-up. This resolves the problem of over and understaffing.

Another feature of this technology from Fourth is its online scheduling tool available 24 hours a day — anytime, anywhere. The tool allows managers to easily adjust schedules based on demand forecast, while employees also have access to an app that allows them to share their schedules in real-time.

This scheduling solution provides fully costed wage forecasting, giving multiple levels of rota approval and snapshot comparisons, with a centralised view of employee work patterns across multiple sites.

Another valuable feature of Fourth’s solution is automating labour compliance rules. This capability mitigates financial risks and penalties due to the possibility of part-time employees obtaining benefits reserved for full-time employees by extending their contractual working hours.

The result

JGR’s decision to invest in a labour management solution and partner with a trusted technology provide like Fourth, delivered very favourable results for the group. 

“Fourth has given us the ability and insight needed to bring all of our stores’ labour and forecasting capabilities above the standard of even the highest performing stores before the implementation,” says Zou.

Aside from being able to roll out the system within five months — amid the pandemic — Fourth was able to seamlessly integrate the workforce management solution into JRG’s complex IT infrastructure with legacy systems and implement it across different stores in different regions. 

Notably, JRG achieved its ROI within just the first month of the deployment of the system. The group has seen a 10% straight reduction in mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), which is a key measure of forecasting accuracy. JRG has also recorded increased labour efficiency across brands and regions. Its regional and area managers now have real-time visibility of store operations, available. 

Having Fourth’s workforce management solution has also allayed JRG’s concerns on compliance as it allowed the company to automate compliance processes, mitigating financial risks. JRG’s restaurants also have access to performance metrics for employees that are a crucial reference for training, rewards, and promotions. 

“Fourth stuck with me through thick and thin, despite the time difference and language barrier,” Zou added. 

For Fourth, this is yet another successful and meaningful partnership that allowed them to do what they do best — provide the best technology solutions that not only address their client’s pain points but also enable them to achieve bigger success. 

“The Fourth Platform has been serving this industry since 1999, so you can be confident that we have the depth of experience and functionality you need,” says Paul Tregoning, general manager of Fourth.