Kanpai Group, one of Taiwan’s leading restaurant chains, has selected SAP S/4HANA as part of its digital transformation and expansion strategy. By deploying the SAP ERP platform, the company aims to streamline business operations and enhance decision-making to gain a competitive advantage in the industry.
Amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan is one of the nations that have prioritised digital technology in the development of various sectors, including the food industry. Tsung-Tsong Wu, the nation’s Minister of Science and Technology, believes that the pandemic is indeed accelerating digital transformation. In an interview with EE Times Asia in August, he said that the current circumstances present both challenges and opportunities for businesses to rethink supply chain management and technological development.
As an example of the government’s digitalisation efforts, the Digital Nation and Innovative Economic Development Program (DIGI+) and the 5+2 Innovative Industries Plan have been put in place since 2016. Moreover, Wu added that Taiwan will focus on six key areas in the post-pandemic era: 5G/6G Internet infrastructure, space, semiconductors, security, precision healthcare, and digital transformation.
In line with Taiwan’s drive for nationwide digitalisation, Kanpai Group — which operates a variety of Japanese Yakiniku restaurants and offers food and beverage services across the country — has expanded its digital transformation strategy in partnership with SAP. (InsideSAP Asia often references articles from websites in other languages to bring you as much information as possible.) In pursuit of the company’s next growth stage, Kanpai Group has implemented SAP S/4HANA as its enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. Leveraging SAP business process solutions such as SAP S/4HANA helps businesses recover and thrive in the post-pandemic world.
Kanpai Group Accelerates Expansion with SAP ERP Platform
Founded in 1999, Kanpai Group has two major product lines: roasted meat (wagyu) and hot pot. The company has grown to eight brands and 34 locations, all dedicated to offering high-quality wagyu and serving customers with combined Taiwanese and Japanese cuisines. Given the business’ rapid expansion, Kanpai Group needed a powerful ERP system to restructure the end-to-end processes, manage the operational data of several departments, improve decision-making, and stay ahead of the competition in the catering market.
Kanpai Group Chairman Hiraide Shoji explained:
“We reorganised the process and successfully launched SAP S/4HANA after 8 months, strengthened process automation, rigorous internal audit and internal control, ensured the correctness of front-end data, and greatly accelerated our financial reporting month.”
“As a result, work time has been shortened by more than 50{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}, and managers can grasp monthly performance more quickly so that decision-making can be based on evidence,” he disclosed.
Meanwhile, Lin Weide, SAP’s Global Vice President and General Manager of Taiwan, said that Kanpai Group chose to introduce SAP S/4HANA to lay a digital core foundation and completely connect all aspects of operations. This will allow decision-makers to grasp the current situation of the group in real-time, flexibly adjust the business policy, and accelerate market response, according to Lin Weide.
“I believe that SAP can support the business scope of Kanpai Group across different business models and provide strong assistance to the company’s future overseas layout plans, so as to prepare ahead of time for the international development,” SAP Taiwan’s GM further added.
Furthermore, the new SAP ERP platform has also helped Kanpai Group in terms of:
- Tracking and tracing all factory information in real-time, from production scheduling, inventory management, to logistics export.
- Directly searching goods on the platform and accurately obtaining each batch and material number to ensure food safety.
- Capturing data, analysing it in multiple dimensions to fully optimise the efficiency of logistics operations.
