Fujitsu SaaS Solution Employed in Building Watami's International Restaurant Management System

Tokyo, November 26, 2012

Fujitsu has announced that Watami Co., Ltd. is deploying CloudStage F, Fujitsu's SaaS business-support solution for the food-service industry, to unify its management systems for restaurants outside of Japan. The new system will be rolled out steadily starting in November and is ultimately expected to cover Watami's 71 restaurants outside of Japan.

For Watami, not only does this mean that the staff at all of its restaurants will have a more efficient process for placing orders, it also means that sales and profits at every restaurant outside of Japan can be tracked in real time, enabling management at the head office to make informed decisions regarding operational improvements more quickly.

Background

Since establishing Watami (China) Co., Ltd. in 2000, Watami has been moving aggressively to expand outside Japan, and now operates 71 restaurants in Asia under Watami International, mostly in Hong Kong. Due to the company's rapid growth, however, certain operations at foreign branches, such as those related to placing and receiving orders, are incompatible with the system in Japan, resulting in increased operational complexity. Another issue associated with rapid overseas growth has been linking local operating companies' systems, which use different languages and currencies, with those in Japan.

This is what led Watami to choose CloudStage F, Fujitsu's SaaS-based business-support solution for the food-service industry, building a management system that would unify all of its restaurants outside Japan on a cloud platform.

System Overview

This system links each of the restaurants outside Japan via the Internet to CloudStage F, Fujitsu's cloud environment for the food-service industry (originally developed by Fujitsu General), which runs on Fujitsu's datacenters in Japan. The system supports Japanese, English, and Chinese (simplified and traditional characters), so that tasks such as ordering, inventory tracking, and sales management can be handled from any country.

Consolidating data in the cloud ensures that each overseas restaurant's ordering process is more systematic, so that the restaurants can run more efficiently. Beyond that, the fact that management in the head office can track each restaurant's sales and profits in real time means that it can make business decisions regarding operational improvements more quickly. As the company continues to expand its overseas operations, new restaurants can be set up more quickly just by connecting them to the cloud environment.

Watami plans to bring the system online at its Hong Kong restaurants in November this year, and will continue with steady roll outs at its other restaurants outside Japan.

Fujitsu looks forward to continuing to assist Watami in its expansion outside of Japan through the use of ICT, and to supporting efficient operations at the company's restaurants throughout the world.