Building a modern BI system for a leading restaurant chain
Client
Better Burger SocietyClient Overview:
A leading restaurant chain holding company with 50+ restaurants in Switzerland and Finland, with yearly revenues of 90+ million EUR. The company is positioned as a premium-quality burger chain.
The Challenge:
The client sought to develop a comprehensive 360-degree business intelligence system to get detailed access to real-time insights on its financial and operational performance. There was a clear need to automate the processes, provide better data quality, and improve clarity on key performance indicators, as the existing setup was built more on manual reporting steps involving Excel and PowerPoint, which required significant manual work before each reporting cycle.
The client was interested in tracking their sales, operational, and employee-related KPis among multiple different dimensions (e.g., restaurant, region, product category, weekday, etc.) as well as having a custom integration with Oracle’s NetSuite to track their financial performance (incl. P&L results and individual invoice-level analysis). There was also a need to have all the underlying data securely stored in the Microsoft Fabric environment.
Our Approach:
Phase 1: Data audit
Our work started with an in-depth data audit to understand the client’s reporting and analysis needs, available data, and existing data infrastructure, and presented an in-depth lineup of topical reports.
To ensure holistic delivery that reaps benefits for the entire company, our data audit involved close engagement with both leadership and operational specialists. By understanding the specific pain points and aspirations at every level, Civitta designed an analytical system that balances strategic oversight with the granular functionality needed for daily operations.
Phase 2A: Initial data integration
Our backend workstream started working by integrating Switzerland restaurant data from multiple sources (ranging from basic Excel workbooks to full-on accounting systems) into Microsoft Fabric. Finland restaurant data had been integrated by the client’s previous BI provider beforehand; our team successfully took over the management of that data infrastructure in the middle of the project.
Phase 2B: Sales, Operations, and Employees report building
At the same time as we worked on integrating Swiss data, our frontend workstream developed functional and dynamic near-real-time reports for the Finnish part of the business. Main focus areas depicted in the reports – Sales, Operations, and Employees. Due to their standardized nature, the concepts were easily applied to the Swiss part of the business once their data was integrated.
Phase 3: NetSuite integration and Finance reports
Once the initial reporting needs were covered, we turned our attention to the next client’s request – detailed financial reporting based on NetSuite data. Our teams developed a comprehensive integration pipeline that not only allows the client to analyze its full P&L (incl. General Ledger and Cost Center levels), but also allows the client to deep-dive into individual invoice PDFs to track any misalignment between budgeted and actual performance.
Phase 4: Continuous data support
With the base reporting and analysis system fully up and running, we continue to support our client in additional operational activities to enhance it even further. Sample topics included:
- Daily sales and operational KPls overview PDF shared by automated email workflow
- Further data consulting on the internally built report structure
Results & Impact:
Civitta delivered a centralized, modern business intelligence solution that significantly reduced manual reporting, accelerated the clients reporting processes, and improved the ability to clearly track business performance. Automated dashboards replaced time-consuming Excel and PowerPoint workflows, which enabled faster access to sales, operational, and financial KPls and thus fastened the business decision-making process. The improved reporting environment allows the client to track performance across multiple dimensions and compare results against the last period and budget. In addition, enhanced financial reporting through NetSuite provides greater transparency, including full P&L views and invoice-level analysis, strengthening financial control and decision-making across the organization.
“The new BI reporting environment significantly improved transparency across our business and reduced manual reporting work. Instead of preparing reports, our teams can now focus more on analysis and decision-making. The availability of new data points also enables deeper insights and supports better-informed decisions across the organization.”
Pekka Multimäki
“Implementing the Power BI solution was a challenging but rewarding project, it required our team to integrate data from multiple sources, optimize numerous reports, and solve performance issues. It was also a pleasure working with a client who truly understands the value of data analytics and high-quality reporting.”
Rokas Šalaševičius
“I would like to thank for excellent collaboration with BBS’s team, where we systematically moved in agile sprints to provide a modern management system allowing timely and effective tracking of performance across dozens of operational units. On our team side the setup of including top notch technical expertise combined with business-savvy management consultants provided once again to be the right combination for practical and effective development.”
Tuomas Virtanen
Key Takeaways:
- By introducing a centralized Bl environment and automated reporting across sales, operations, employees, and finance, Civitta enabled a significant reduction in manual work while improving the reliability and depth of analysis. Clear and well-structured reports allow teams to shift their focus from report preparation to understanding results and identifying improvement opportunities.
- The case demonstrates that organizations operating in multi-country environments can achieve better decision-making by optimizing existing data sources and tools. Improving data transparency and aligning reporting with real business needs can deliver meaningful value without requiring major changes to core systems.
- The success of the delivery was anchored in our initial preparatory phase. Rather than diving straight into development, we prioritized a robust data audit and deep-level stakeholder engagement. This upfront investment eliminated ambiguity and ensured that the final delivery was tailored to the organization’s actual infrastructure and reporting needs.
