Acumatica Case Study: KFC Singapore

Situation

KFC Singapore found that while it could upgrade its ERP solution, JD Edwards Financial Management Module, to meet its expanded needs, the cost required for the extra modules and user accounts would have been too prohibitive. A review turned up a few possibilities, but none fully met the expectations and budget of KFC Singapore.

That was when the company’s Senior Manager for Finance and IT, J.N. Tan, decided to cast the net wider by trawling the web. This led him to a company and product that piqued his interest— Acumatica.

He says: “I’ve always wanted to move the company to a web-based application, so I kept looking for alternatives until I found Acumatica on the web. There was local support in Singapore, and that was a big part of our decision to evaluate the product.”

Solution 

Despite being close to selecting another ERP solution, KFC Singapore chose Acumatica because:

• It offered the best return-on-investment in excess of $50,000 within the first year,
• It had the most well-rounded feature set, and Acumatica developers built new modules to further extend the capabilities of the product, and,
• It offered the freedom to provide access to all authorized staff at the corporate office.

With strong support from Acumatica Singapore, KFC Singapore embarked on its transition to a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Results

Impressive ROI with Acumatica

By switching to Acumatica’s SaaS solution running on Windows Azure, KFC Singapore was able to save about $50,000 in IT resources because the Cloud model significantly reduced IT administrative costs, such as the downloading and installation of software upgrades and patches, and the need to install client software on every machine. Savings were also realized with the elimination of annual software maintenance fees and the need for hardware upgrades. In return, KFC Singapore was able to utilize the best in data center architecture, database administration, security, and helpdesk support. 

A Complete and Customizable Financial Solution

The ability to extend Acumatica’s capabilities was another factor for its selection. KFC Singapore was impressed that the suite came with a strong set of modules with no additional license fees, such as tools to manage fixed assets and sales and purchase orders. Additional modules were developed by Acumatica to further meet the operational needs of KFC Singapore.

Access Across the Organization

The combination of unlimited user licensing, a powerful but userfriendly interface, and a browser-based solution allowed KFC Singapore to provide access to all of its HQ employees, who could interact with the corporate ERP in versatile ways. While unlimited licensing model removed any financial obstacles in scaling out access to the whole corporate office, the intuitive look-and-feel and tight integration with Microsoft Excel meant that there was a much shorter learning curve for users.

A direct consequence of the companywide rollout of Acumatica was that KFC Singapore was able to fully use many of Acumatica’s features to power its corporate backbone, allowing it to track advertising and marketing expenditures with greater detail, streamline and automate work processes, and manage submission and approval of purchase orders.

Acumatica is today the engine that is used by KFC Singapore to manage its business, drive growth and continue to lead in its industry.

Says Jeffrey Lim, IT Manager, KFC Singapore: “Despite our enthusiasm for a web-based solution, I had some reservations because of the massive amounts of transactions we had to conduct through the cloud. But the system went live and handled the heavy volume effortlessly, and we are pleased that things have gone so well.”