Brookwood revolutionises site operations with RAPID

Background

The Brookwood Partnership provides contract catering services to over 80 schools and is unique in providing catering to only independent schools. Brookwood's 'Eating for Life' programme has raised children's dietary awareness and it was recognised by The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies To Work For in 2010.

Project Summary

Brookwood wished to reduce the costs of its IT services as well as increase the scope of the services offered through technology to its schools. RAPID from Retail Answers is successfully used by retailers throughout the world and the 2 organisations worked together to extend the scope of RAPID to meet Brookwood’s specific requirements and the demands of the contract catering market. RAPID manages invoices, estimates, internal issues, account cards, cash, stock, timesheets and appraisals. In addition, RAPID has a site diary, workflow management, forms design functionality and a document library with automatic content searching.

Benefits

RAPID is now operational in all Brookwood schools and the main benefits are:

• Increasing the efficiency of remote site operations by automating processes and simplifying data entry.
• Simple yet powerful weekly reconciliation forms and checklists so that each site can approve key stock, labour and cash figures to control trading performance.
• Cashing up processes that are quick yet control cash and account card liabilities.
• A multi-level messaging system to provide instant alerts and to monitor the compliance of actions.
• A flexible forms management system allowing users to design their own forms and collect key information from sites for a range of purposes including training, health and safety and hygiene requirements.

Melanie Ross, catering manager at Marymount School said

“Entering invoices is really straightforward and the weekly checklist makes sure I do everything before I go home on Friday”.

Rapid has been designed to be implemented quickly and smoothly. Configuration options provide the right amount of flexibility while not being overly complex and the web-based architecture means that it is simple to deploy across both head office and store networks with the minimum of overhead. RAPID will operate seamlessly on the existing tills, the new tills and iPads in East’s stores as well as PCs in head office.

Graham Sibthorp, partner at Brookwood said

“We wanted a new system that would significantly improve the efficiency and flexibility of our remote site operations and provide a platform for our future growth. RAPID has certainly achieved that and Retail Answers has been incredibly responsive in designing a system to meet our needs and it can only have great appeal in the wider contract catering market”.