How the country’s favorite pizza chain innovates digitally for enhancing guest experience
First the crust: Shakey’s, a beloved family place for Filipinos
If there is one place where we Filipinos instantly choose to celebrate, that place had to be the one where we share a Manager’s Choice thin crust pizza with a side of mojos and a pitcher of soda.
The Shakey’s Pizza chain, which has been around in the Philippines since the ‘70s, actually began in California in the US in 1954. Ever since then, the red and yellow booth counters give us fond memories of celebrating best with our families in a pizza parlor. Its tagline is simple – “Fun, Family, Pizza!”
Today, Shakey’s has 184 outlets across the entire country and is one of the leading operators of casual dining restaurants.
Despite its leadership in this highly competitive category, Shakey’s continues to innovate in this category to be top of mind as the top family-oriented restaurant. To be family-oriented means providing the same comfort food and atmosphere that always brings back fond memories. But this kind of association also means that a friendly, casual dining experience that is fast, easy and approachable.
Behind this approach is highly discerning back-end that allows Shakey’s to consistently deliver that experience. From its core value of being “Guest First,” they embarked on a digital transformation that will further enhance their customer’s experience in dine-in and delivery.
Next, the sauce: Shakey’s Digital transformation journey
What would be, to ascribe to Shakey’s most famous pizza, The “Manager’s Choice” for their digital transformation strategy? Transforming most of the operational efficiencies from the accounting, procurement and inventory to store operations through Microsoft Dynamics AX and running on the Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure.
With all these back-end operations on the cloud, Shakey’s envisions that within the year, there would be a seamless integration on every customer interaction from their ordering process in every restaurant to even table management, kitchen management and piping hot pizza deliveries.
“We have embarked on our digital transformation strategy with a lot of serious intent and focus on execution,” says Shakey’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) Mauch Franco. “We have begun by putting in a sound infrastructure in place, such as Microsoft’s Azure. As we move to executing our full digital vision in the next couple of years, we look forward to leveraging Microsoft Dynamics’ and Azure’s reliable analytics and data management to optimize our operations so that in turn, we provide guests with the best casual dining experience possible.”
As a top casual dining brand, it also means planning demand efficiently, especially during holidays with peak demand. An example of this is Mother’s Day – an event important to Filipinos and one where most Filipino families seek a fun and enjoyable experience dining and ordering from Shakey’s. In the past, the huge spike on demand prompted online orders to crash as the previous servers cannot take on the demand. But with Microsoft Azure, Shakey’s is readily equipped to account for the spike in the orders and transactions and guests are assured that they can have their Shakey’s on this all-important holiday.
Finally, the cheese and toppings: Enhancing everything for Shakey’s guests
Now that the digital transformation provides that fine crust by handling all this “chaos in the kitchen,” Shakey’s gets to add more toppings by going beyond the in-store dining experience to enjoying the Shakey’s experience in the home such as easy ordering through the website or mobile app – all reliably hosted on the cloud with Microsoft Azure.
Shakey’s “Guest First” remains the final topping and secret ingredient behind all these innovations. Because being passionate in becoming having “pizza perfect” for families requires attention to detail even in the areas that the customer cannot see. And this is why for more than 40 years, Shakey’s has remained the fun and family go-to for Filipinos.
To get to know more about Shakey’s, visit their website at https://www.shakeyspizza.ph.