Columbus Café

With more than 220 points of sale, Columbus Café & Co is facing, like many franchises, the challenge of centralizing data, which impacts both the purchasing strategy at the headquarters and operational excellence in the field.‍

Nicolas Riché, CEO of Columbus Café & Co, explains: “The choice of Inpulse is part of our digital transformation process. More than just an ordering tool, we offer our franchisees inventory management software that also forecasts activity, optimizes purchases and margins. Franchisees will have better control of their food costs, as a franchisor we will have a global vision of recipe sheets, mercurials, orders... to accelerate the go to market of new products and optimize purchases at the network level.”

Enabling franchisees to place the right orders

‍Guillaume Tirquit, Columbus Café & Co franchisee in Rouen, reports on the problems encountered in the field: “Before Inpulse, we had shortages and losses due to a lack of accurate data on our stocks and our needs for raw materials. We hope to optimize our inventory management and therefore our margin. Automated order recommendations and credit requests via Inpulse will also save us time.”

After a few weeks of use, franchisees are already seeing the first benefits:‍

Sébastien Polo, operator of 4 Columbus Café franchises (Montpellier, Béziers, 2 in Nimes) tells us about the onboarding of its teams: “I tested Inpulse on my 4 points of sale. The tool is easy to use. It's simple and intuitive. I am amazed at the accuracy of the sales forecasts.” Augustin Anandout, franchisee Columbus Café & Co in Bourges adds: “My manager was trained quickly and for my part, I can monitor my margin since the analyses, I no longer have to wait until the end of the month to see the performance of my establishment.”

Manage the performance of points of sale with reliable and centralized data

Reconciling franchisees' orders with the quantities and prices negotiated by the purchasing department is essential to improve the network's purchasing strategy. This problem is even stronger in this context of shortage and soaring prices of raw materials, as specified in Anne Jacquinod-Carry, Director of Functional and Digital Transformation at Columbus Café & Co : “We needed access to reliable data both at headquarters and in the field to act more quickly in this turbulent context. Thanks to Inpulse, we centralize key data for the analysis of financial performance at headquarters: turnover, purchase volume by reference, by supplier and for each point of sale: material cost, turnover, difference between theoretical consumption and real consumption. ”

Structuring and digitizing the entire process “from product creation to sale”

The implementation of Inpulse has accelerated change management at Columbus adds: Anne Jacquinod-Carry, Director of Functional and Digital Transformation at Columbus Café & Co : “We wanted to provide franchisees with an intelligent tool to optimize their supplies and stocks and better manage their margins. We took advantage of the implementation of Inpulse to review a whole set of internal processes, streamline our methods and professionalize our teams. More than a “purchasing” project, it has become a real transversal project to improve coordination between marketing, central purchasing, franchisees and suppliers. ”

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If you want to take advantage of a demonstration of Inpulse, Request an appointment with an expert today to find out what Inpulse can do for you.