Construction of IT system of Costa Coffee

For many hardcore coffee fans, Costa coffee means stronger coffee and better coffee choice. In 2006, Costa Coffee came all the way from Europe to Shanghai, China. The parent company of Costa Coffee is Whitbread Plc Company from the United Kingdom, which has a history of 260 years. It is mainly engaged in fast food and hotels in the UK. Premier Inn Hotel and Costa Coffee are its own global brands.

Coffee from Italy has gone from Britain to the world and won the market in China. At the end of 2011, Costa Coffee's solution provided by Fujitsu (China) Information Systems Co., Ltd. (Fujitsu) was fully launched, and a global enterprise welcomed by the local market began a new process.

The history of good coffee

There is no doubt that the strongest coffee in Europe comes from Italy. Some people say that long-distance drivers in Italy are veritable coffee experts. In Italy, there is always amazing coffee in little-known shops along the highway. In fact, the brand of Costa comes from a pair of Italian brothers. More than 40 years ago, a pair of Italian brothers living in the UK thought London was great, but lacked quality coffee options, so they opened the first Costa coffee shop. Costa Coffee quickly won the UK, Whitbread collectivized management, and promoted the global development of Costa Coffee.

With the passage of time, the hot spots of the global economy gradually move eastward. The economic rise of China and Asia has attracted the attention of the world. China has become an important market for Costa coffee after the UK. In 2004, the team of Costa Coffee entered China to conduct consumer research and market research. Costa always adheres to the concept of "best Choice of Coffee". In 2004, Costa found a partner with the same philosophy as itself.

In 2006, Costa and Yueda established Yueda Ka Shijia (Shanghai) Food and Beverage Management Co., Ltd in Shanghai. In December 2006, Ramada, the first store of Costa in Shanghai, opened.

Because of China's vast territory and great regional differences, Costa in China is bounded by the Yellow River, and the north and south enterprises have been selected for cooperation. Yuedaga Shijia (Shanghai) is located in the south of the Yellow River. The market north of the Yellow River is managed by a joint venture between Costa and Beijing Hualian.

The favorite taste of Chinese people.

Generally speaking, Costa coffee maintains the traditional European flavor and adheres to the European DNA of Costa coffee. At the same time, it also makes adjustments according to the taste preferences and environmental preferences of Chinese consumers.

In terms of taste, the Costa coffee coming to China has added matcha flavor. For example, European customers prefer cold sandwiches, while Chinese consumers prefer soft cake products; in addition, Chinese customers want more salad choices, and Costa cafes in China usually offer 2-3 fruit salads and 1-2 vegetable salads compared to single European salads. In addition to coffee flavor and food matching, the environment of coffee shops also shows great differences. In Europe, coffee is a part of daily life. People usually spend 5-10 minutes drinking a cup of coffee and then leave. Coffee shops are more like fast food restaurants. In China, coffee shops are places for parties, chat and leisure meetings, so they need more spacious environment, comfortable seats and wonderful music, while coffee shops need an environment of privacy, comfort, and even elegance and style.

Localize IT solution

In line with the changes in coffee taste, food setting and environmental settings of Costa Coffee, it can also not be ignored that Costa Coffee's localized IT solution.

Xu Feng, information technology manager of Yueda Ka Shijia (Shanghai) Food and Beverage Management Co., Ltd., said: the original system of Costa stores comes from the United Kingdom, the server is in Germany, and the transmission speed has greatly affected the store expansion. The development of Costa coffee in China urgently needs a new localization system.

In October 2010, Costa Coffee began simple contact with Fujitsu (China) Information Systems Co., Ltd., according to research and full contact with Fujitsu team, Costa felt the service spirit of Fujitsu and finally decided to cooperate with Fujitsu. Fujitsu began implementing its store solution for Costa Coffee in April 2011. From April to mid-July, the system survey was completed and some stores began trial operation. In September, Costa stores were switched in batches. On November 25, 2011, the new system was fully launched, including the foreground POS and the background purchase, sale and inventory management module.

Xu Feng further explained: in fact, domestic POS products are already very perfect, and the quality of domestic products is similar to that of foreign products. The reason for choosing Fujitsu is that Costa pays more attention to three points: first, the secondary development capability of the software. Second, service. Fujitsu's good service and fast response have been recognized by many customers. Third, Fujitsu is a big integrator. The decision-making department of Costa believes that the system is closely related to the system, the system module currently used by Costa Coffee is relatively simple, the function is single, the IT architecture of the whole enterprise is still under construction, and Fujitsu can provide a complete industry solution. More advantageous, Fujitsu has rich experience in solutions, which can effectively predict the problems that may arise in the future and avoid the information risk of the enterprise.

Currently, Costa's selected Fujitsu products include hardware products and solution services. Hardware products include POS machines and servers. Costa believes that unified IT vendors can shorten maintenance time and achieve more efficient IT unified management. Coincidentally, in addition to Costa Coffee, Starbucks Coffee, the most important competitor of Costa Coffee in China, and San Moke Coffee from Japan have also chosen Fujitsu's chain catering solution.

Bian Minna, financial director of Yuedaga Shijia, said: competitors in the industry adopt the solutions provided by Fujitsu and good feedback, which gives Costa a good reference. At the same time, we believe that Fujitsu's professional technology and institutionalized management will fully protect the interests of different customers. It is also believed that Fujitsu's rich experience in the coffee chain industry will help Costa Group to make better use of the solution system.

A highly popular local system

After the new system was launched, Fujitsu trained Costa store managers in batches, and Costa also carried out training on the new system. Within one year of the launch of the system, Fujitsu will provide four free training to provide customers with professional operation guidance.

Compared with the original system from the UK, the new system is obviously more popular in the local market.

First, the full Chinese interface. Compared with the English interface of the original system, the operation speed of the shop assistant can be greatly improved.

Second, convenient promotion settings, the new system supports a variety of promotion combinations, can support time-by-time promotion and different product combinations and other modes. Costa coffee is priced uniformly across the country, and the promotion varies according to the regional market. For example, according to climate differences, summer drinks are offered in South China from April to November, while summer drinks are promoted in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai from June to September. In addition, the promotion efforts of the new city will be greater.

Comparatively speaking, the technical support of the original system is located abroad, there is no local support, long-distance transnational communication, inefficient. Bian Minna also pointed out that the promotion methods in the domestic market are far more complex than those in Europe, such as comment and group purchase, both of which are relatively special promotion forms in China. In these areas, it is difficult to communicate details with IT engineers from a cross-cultural background. This will not happen at all with the localization support provided by Fujitsu.

The Road of IT for the Future

At present, Costa Coffee has about 100 stores in the Shanghai joint venture to the south of the Yellow River and more than 70 in Beijing to the north of the Yellow River. Shanghai has the largest number of stores, in addition to Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Guangdong is also developing, followed by inland cities. The time for Costa coffee to enter the Chinese market is very favorable. In the past three or four years, China's inland provincial capital cities and second-and third-tier cities have developed rapidly, the income of urban residents has increased, and local residents with strong consumption power have become the target customers of Costa coffee.

Compared with the expansion of Costa coffee stores, Costa's IT construction is not fast. This is because Costa firmly believes that direction is more important than speed. Only when the direction is determined can we speed up the run. Xu Feng used an analogy to describe the cooperation between Costa and Fujitsu. Xu Feng believes that IT has two feet: information architecture (info. Structure) and application function module (application). Fujitsu has rich experience in server selection, IT structure, backup, disaster recovery and so on. Fujitsu can give suggestions and suggestions to the IT construction of Costa. Fujitsu is also a supplier to Whitbread Plc, the parent company of Costa coffee. Fujitsu's UK team can fully communicate with Costa's British parent company-the application module must also take into account the needs of the parent company-and Fujitsu Shanghai team can fully communicate with Costa Shanghai, saving the middle of communication.

The POS system and the background purchase, sale and storage system currently used by Costa Coffee are important basic IT subsystems, Xu said. In the future, all subsystems of Costa Coffee, including finance, logistics, human resources and so on, will be based on this core module. Costa Coffee is planning to be based on the membership system of the current system, with functions such as points exchange; it is also considering eMurbusinessman, which supports a variety of payment methods; and it will add business intelligence modules such as data analysis in the future.

After a large number of data research and analysis by relevant consulting companies, Costa concluded that China's coffee market has great potential, and more and more people become coffee people and COSTA customers. Costa plans to have 400 stores in the next five years. The specific rate of development will be adjusted according to the specific conditions of each year. Bian Minna stressed: for Costa coffee, the number is not the ultimate goal; the positioning of Costa is always: Best choice of coffee, the best coffee choice.

(responsible Editor: Leo)