1. Outsourcing: The Brinker Experience
Robert Hess
Director of Software Services

2. Agenda Who is Brinker? What are the IT Challenges? Why outsource?
The Brinker experience…

3. Who Is Brinker? First Chili’s built in 1975
Chili’s Inc. was purchased by Norman Brinker in 1983
Renamed to Brinker International in 1991
Annual sales – $3 billion
Currently we have 1100 restaurants
In 47 states
In 20 countries
Annual growth rate of 15%

4. Who Is Brinker?

5. Who Is Brinker?
Fortune Magazine honored Brinker as one of “America’s Most Admired Companies,” ranking Brinker the number one company in the entire food service industry in management quality, employee talent, product quality and innovation.

6. IT Challenges Operations focused company – Very dynamic business
Multiple Concepts / Different Business Models
Corporate and Franchise Needs
Store Environments
800+ individual networks
Point of Sale Environments
Recent WAN implementation
Critical business data distributed in 800+ locations

7. IT Challenges IT strategy
How do we “keep the wheels on” the current systems and migrate the systems to future technology solutions?
What are the specific skill set gaps?
Where do I find / how can I afford the talent needed?
How do I know how many people I need?

8. Why Outsource? Clear backlog of maintenance requests
Release resources for focusing on strategic initiatives
Achieve cost savings without compromising on service levels
Achieve flexibility in staffing – quick ramp-up / ramp-down
Improve time to market for launching new services
Improve stability and reliability of the applications
Introduce process culture in IT

9. The Brinker Experience
After a thorough evaluation process, we identified Cognizant Technology Solutions for the following reasons:
Experienced player in the outsourcing arena.
Excellent customer retention and referral
Well defined processes that are ISO 9001 certified and CMM Level 5 assessed
Good communications infrastructure and highly-qualified and experienced technical and managerial personnel
Outsourcing model.
The scalability of resources.

10. The Brinker Experience
Kicked off the project in October 1999 at Dallas for application value management of
Brinker Store System (size: 6453 FP)
Brinker Catering System (size: 5003 FP)
Set up a simulate lab offshore creating a trusted and highly secure physical and electronic environment
Clearly defined configuration management, replication and source code management

11. The Brinker Experience
Production
Beta Sites
Onsite
Iterative Development
Requirements Gathering
Analysis / Prototyping
High Level Design
Acceptance Testing
Offshore
High Level Design
Detailed Design
Construction
Testing - Integral / System

12. Outsourcing Onsite-Offshore Composition for Typical Development

13. Staffing Patterns

14. Case Study 1: Gift Card Business situation
Extremely critical, “must-go-live” before holiday season begins in October
Integration with corporate back-office applications and third party integration with payment gateway
Requirements gathering began in early June
Project size person-days of effort
NEED A GIFT CARD GRAPHIC

15. Case Study 1: Gift Card... Cognizant solution...
Integrated all applications and payment gateway
Created a dedicated and highly skilled team onsite and offshore
Gift Card transaction data now available in data warehouse
Created an application that ensured fraud detection
Provided for cross-branding opportunities and special event cards
Increased revenues from Gift Card Sales by 25%

16. Case Study 2: Catering System
Business situation
New focus on catering business was showing great revenue potential
Catering business growth was limited by no software to support their new business model
We built 5 different ‘prototype’ versions of catering software to support 5 different concepts with different business models.
And of course, no documentation about what was different about the software versions.

17. Case Study 2: Catering System
Cognizant solution…
During knowledge transfer, completely documented the system
Worked with Brinker resources to establish a consolidation plan for the different version of the system
Established a team who became familiar with the current software and could provide support
Developed a ‘common’ release 1.0 with complete automated testing process
Current release is 1.1 and quality was above my expectations

18. First Web based project
Custom developed Web based financial software using our WAN infrastructure to eliminate duplication of effort and simplify reconciliation issues.
Enterprise application integration of AS400 financials and Brinker Store System
Where we are:
Provided staff with skill sets in building e-business applications.
Provided assistance with architecture review and capacity planning.
10 man year effort – scheduled for 8 months elapsed time
Project is currently at the end of the high level design phase and is on schedule.

19. Is it working? Clear backlog of maintenance requests
Release resources for focusing on strategic initiatives
Achieve cost savings without compromising on service levels
Achieve flexibility in staffing – quick ramp-up / ramp-down
Improve time to market for launching new services
Improve stability and reliability of the applications
Introduce process culture in IT

20. Schedule and Effort Tracking
Schedule Variance
Effort Variance

21. Risk and Defect Monitoring
Risk Monitoring
Defect Prevention

22. SLA Monitoring
SLA Monitoring 25 50 75
100
SLA Monitoring

23. Keys to Successful Outsourcing
Obtain buy-in from within the organization
Develop a management plan, including:
Strong executive leadership
Transition strategy
Experienced change manager acceptable to the affected groups and a clear change plan that is funded and resourced
Informed feedback and swift issue resolution

24. Key to Successful Outsourcing...
Visit offshore facilities and get a touch and feel of the vendor
Kick-off a project with non-critical tasks as the first engagement and then transition to more critical ones
Invest in hosting a permanent relationship manager from the vendor at homesite

25. Thank You