McAlister’s has pursued a rapid and successful growth strategy over the past 5 to 6 years, aimed at attracting new franchisee groups and franchise-owned locations. In order to maintain this level of growth, McAlister’s needed to provide automation to improve the purchasing and distribution process in order to provide maximum value for each of the franchisee partners. Specifically, they needed to be able to verify that invoices were being matched to the contracted purchase price without burdening franchisee management with the administrative overhead associated with the task. Additionally, given the growth of franchises, McAlister’s required timely ad hoc reporting capabilities that was distributor neutral. Purchasing needed to accurately show food spending patterns by franchisee and by location to ensure buy-in by managers to corporate purchasing decision-making.


The Solution
Tibersoft offered McAlister’s the benefits of a dedicated solution: accuracy, speed, and flexibility.

McAlister’s over-riding requirement in a new solution was having the flexibility to report on compliance issues and aggregate food spending based on their own naming conventions and information needs without regard to who their distributors were. Their evaluation of automated solutions lead them to choose the proven technology and services from Tibersoft. Tibersoft’s formula for success - flexible ad hoc reporting, rapid implementation process and foodservice operator expertise - far surpassed other available options and exceeded McAlister’s expectations.

The overriding benefit derived thus far for the corporate purchasing is the confidence they feel when meeting with suppliers and franchisee partners. “Confidence best describes how we all feel about the ability to answer the important aggregate food spending questions that always come up during face-to-face meetings”, says VP of Purchasing, Iris Holloway. Aggregate spending can be viewed through the structure of the company: franchisee, corporate, regionally and by locations.

This means that for suppliers, purchasing is always armed with the facts on aggregate spending for all items providing hard evidence for decisions made and for future procurement plans. For franchisee managers, purchasing can access real-time ad hoc reports to show exactly what they are using and not using by location and help in internal planning and evaluation of future spending and product usage projections.

With the data chaos removed, purchasing adds more value to operations, finance and the entire franchisee community. As Iris Holloway adds, “I can answer most questions in 15 minutes or less and that is very empowering to all of us.”


The Early Returns:
McAlister’s has realized significant returns and impressive benefits to date: