Pastel starts to cook
After Easylife Kitchens franchisees – and their two factories – got in on the Pastel Evolution revolution, business really began to heat up.
A professional kitchen requires strict coherence. Easylife Kitchens, a leading South African kitchen specialist has linked its nationwide operations using Pastel Evolution. The kitchen designer and installer chose Evolution to improve co-ordination amongst its 25 franchisees, two factories and peripheral operations. “Pastel Evolution has enabled us to cut the time in producing management accounts for board meetings from more than three months to just seven days after month end,” says Easylife Kitchens financial manager, Carl Rothero.
“Our control and reporting is much improved. Each month we report back to our main debtors, Easylife Kitchen franchisees. Now, with up-to-date information, the assistance we can give them by way of business advice or simply maintaining and protecting the Easylife brand through their operations is much more effective.”
No more hard copies
“We have been using Pastel accounting products, but as separate entities,” says Rothero. “This meant our bookkeeper had to work off hard copies to consolidate the accounts.”
By integrating all its information and making it accessible in real time, Evolution has made the company that much more manageable. Group managing director Philip Kirby admits that the inertia of sticking to what they were comfortable with, even though it wasn’t ideal, was easier than confronting the perceived disruption and having to learn new ways of doing things.
Installed within two months
“As it turned out, there was no disruption,” says Kirby. “Evolution was installed within two months, it picked up our new opening balances and we haven’t yet had to call Beams Ahead, the implementation partner.” He said Beams Ahead thoroughly analysed the business processes and configured Evolution to fit in with their needs rather than fit in with rigid software.
“In other words, the move was easy and the benefits of having information at our fingertips – in time to take remedial action if necessary or just make astute strategic decisions – are so much greater than staying with something that’s outdated or isn’t integrated.”
Werner Husi of Beams Ahead, said the Easylife Kitchens implementation went smoothly because the company was very clear about what functionality it wanted and had executive commitment. “It’s always so much easier when a customer takes ownership of the solution,” Husi says.
Comparing apples with apples
Easylife Kitchens now recommends Pastel to all of its franchisees.
“Although our system is not linked to theirs, the advantage of having
franchisees use accounting packages from the same stable as Evolution
means that all the charts of accounts are very similar and we can
compare apples with apples,” Rothero said. “And, of course, everyone
using the same packages facilitates our job of providing financial and
business support and guidance to our franchisees – because we know
how their books are set up and how, ideally, they should be working.”
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