Inns and Leisure

A customer for over 15 years, Inns & Leisure is a thriving company operating in the leisure industry. They have 32 outlets, including pubs, clubs and restaurants of which 10 are managed houses and 22 are tenancies.

Mr Ray Fisher is Administration Manager of Inns & Leisure and this is how he described their situation in 1996.
“At the time each of our outlets were using individual tills and whilst we felt they were good enough to do the job it was taking 7-10 days to compile accurate management information on sales, stock and promotions, and we felt we weren’t taking advantage of the technology that was available. We needed to move with the times and become more sophisticated in order to compete with the big breweries.”

“Now our EPoS system is fantastic. We feel we have control. We have all management information within hours of closing time. We can change prices every 24 hours if we wish, we know which promotions are working and which aren’t and we have instant access to stock levels. We even know our daily profit margins. We have knowledge, control and the ability to make better decisions, quicker, all done centrally at head office.”

I talked to Stewart Mahon at North West Business Machines and I was impressed. From the beginning they took the time to understand our business. They realised what we needed and held our hands throughout the process. They have not only installed the systems but have such a high level of backup service that they’re on call 24 hours, seven days a week. They also undertook all staff training with such diplomacy that not once in our relationship have any of our staff felt belittled by our lack of knowledge.

The efficiency of the business has increased dramatically. We now work smarter not harder and we have experienced an 80% increase in successful performance in our day to day disciplines. Staff confidence has also risen sharply.

The system has taken away time consuming manual administration allowing management to spend more time on customer service. We have reduced stockholding, stock errors and fraud.