Customer Stories – Humax Asia

Taiwanese love to reward a hard day’s work with a delicious meal. Originally founded as Japan Wondertable (under Humax Group), Humax Asia transformed this trend into a business opportunity. In recent years, it has actively introduced new catering brands, expanded its business map and set up a central kitchen. Currently, it has 6 brands and 40 points of presence in Taiwan, including the famous sukiyaki restaurant Mo-Mo-Paradise, authentic Italian outlet Bellini Pasta Pasta, and the tempura donburi brand, Tenkichiya. Representing a wide range of culinary styles, Humax Asia has grown to become a hub of favorite brands for gourmet enthusiasts.

As its business scaled up, Humax Asia made it a priority to improve its process management, control mechanisms and data analysis. First, it decommissioned its prior system, which at that point was over 10 years old. Among the changes anticipated, Humax Asia expected to abandon its previous framework of individual-shop-based operations for an integrated management system. After careful assessment and with this in mind, Humax Asia made the decision to introduce FlexSystem’s ERP solution two years ago.

Tristan Chen, project manager to the general manager’s office at Humax Asia, stated that after reviewing a variety of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, they realized many management systems were designed with a “manufacturing” mind set. Many incorporated features that were not suitable for the catering industry, and the framework structures were too rigid for the requirements of Humax Asia. After comparing different options in the market, Humax Asia found what they desired most in FlexSystem, namely, flexibility. FlexSystem’s ERP solutions use a modular structure which gives users the choice of importing only the modules they need, instead of forcing them to utilize an entire system out of the box. Also, the system configurations were exceptionally flexible. Simply by adding or editing settings, users can fulfil new requirements as a business evolves, saving time and resources on deploying a new customized system for every change.

Chen further added that FlexSystem’s flexibility is a great asset for Humax Asia as they foresee business management only growing more sophisticated over time. Their management team believes as points of sale increase, it is no longer practical to assign staff to conduct site visits in person. Rather, a digital transformation is needed. For this reason, the capability for keen analysis was another key criteria behind their choice of ERP solution, another strength and ability FlexSystem demonstrates.

In addition to hundreds of standard reports, FlexSystem also provides easy-to-use report analysis tables (Pivot Tables) and FION (financial information ON-line) report tools. Users do not need to learn a specific programming language, nor do they need to memorize complicated Excel functions, the system will automatically define reports according to company needs. For example, if the administrator would like to know the profit and loss of certain brands or outlets, or if they wanted to improve their service and design new menus based on the monthly revenue growth of outlets, they can find out whether that growth is contributed by higher bill value, more diners or other reasons. All they need to do is to choose the aspect to analyze and quickly auto-generate a report. This enables users to explore opportunities behind the data, which were not possible before.

FlexSystem supports the export and import of data in multiple formats so that it can be easily read by other systems. This feature had a great impact on Humax Asia’s future planning. Its previous management system was in use for many years, and therefore its staff was used to it. Thanks to FlexSystem’s agile data migration capabilities, Humax Asia could introduce FlexSystem in phases to avoid affecting daily operations with a sudden change all at once. The first phase included items in the financial management -related modules, i.e. the general ledger, fixed assets, and payment and printing of bills; while other trading functions (purchases, sales & inventory) were supported by the old system in the interim. Meanwhile, FlexSystem would interface with the old system’s data. As the general ledger is the heart of ERP and the master of all data, the financial management system became the priority module for introduction. And since implementation only involved the finance and accounting department, this first phase was restricted to a specific, controllable segment of Humax Asia’s operations, increasing the probability of its success.

Planning for the second phase, involving the trading-related modules, took about 5 to 6 months before the introduction. FlexSystem consultants and Chen carefully discussed the operation requirements and processes of each department, resulting in nearly 80 pages (A4 size) of detailed requirement specifications. FlexSystem engineers then took 3 months to develop and test the new system in accordance with the specifications, with the entire development process taking about 9 months.

In comparison to other deployments, the high efficiency shown throughout the Humax Asia project is a testament to Chen’s skill as a competent coordinator. Chen helped to centralize the collection of requirements and procedures from internal procurement, general affairs, accounting, outlets and the central kitchen, and then translate them into a language the ERP solution provider could understand. FlexSystem consultants were thus able to accurately offer valuable advice and communicate with engineers effectively. He also suggested that Flexsystem design training courses based on the processes defined in the technical requirements, and roll out training courses in phases for different departments, so that everyone could familiarize themselves with their own operating procedures.

Chen recalled that before the system was introduced, procedures and processes were not clear to staff. If any issues were found, staff was unable to completely solve the problem even after devoting time to them. Now, with the aid of FlexSystem, there is more control over the whole business process. Any omissions or errors can be individually identified and fixed. Staff can dig out the underlying problems behind each issue, which is crucial to future operation management. Also, through correct operation and the central collation of data, the company can begin to accumulate clean and analytically valuable internal data. With the complete and transparent business information, the company can speed up the pace of data analysis in its operations, and help different departments make decisions and evaluate their performance based on objective data, as well as identify hidden opportunities and problems.

Humax Asia, through the deployment of FlexSystem, has solidly integrated its financial accounting, trading and POS to facilitate streamlined and smooth operations. Riding on this successful deployment, Humax Asia is confident about the company’s ongoing digitalization and its future utilizing integrated process management.