Morton's Finds Back Office Unity in the Cloud
Morton's Restaurant Group, Inc. (www.mortons.com) is the world's largest operator of company-owned, upscale steakhouses, with 76 steakhouses located in 64 cities across 27 states, and in Puerto Rico and five international locations.
Morton's selected Compeat (www.compeat.com) to replace an older back office system and a series of Excel spreadsheets that were
being used to manage inventory and track sales and costs at their restaurants. Prior to implementing Compeat, Morton's maintained 76 unique databases (one for each restaurant), and support of these disparate systems was very labor intensive. In addition, the integration of information from the store systems with Morton's Great Plains (www.microsoft.com) accounting system was limited and what integration existed was not timely.
Compeat's hosted, Web-enabled architecture has virtually eliminated Morton's support and maintenance issues. Seventy-six unique restaurant databases are now condensed into one common database which has made the maintenance of each restaurant's inventory a snap. Compeat's Web-enabled platform has also eliminated the need to move data between the restaurants and the company office; all of the data is already in one common database and is present immediately upon transaction entry. Significant efficiencies have been gained and now operations and corporate management have more timely financial information.
What's more, Compeat's restaurant applications seamlessly integrate with its accounting applications. The result for Morton's is that daily sales and inventory counts automatically post to the general ledger, and inventory invoices automatically post to accounts payable. Morton's has one solution via Compeat where their restaurant and accounting solutions are fully synchronized, are always in balance, and company personnel can drill down from the general ledger to each sales or inventory transaction. Morton's also now produces on-demand profit and loss reports for each restaurant. The Compeat end-to-end back office and accounting solution not only saves time, but it also reduces manual steps for Morton's.
Morton's is leveraging several other aspects of Compeat's back office solution to improve their efficiency and control. Restaurant house account charges are automatically integrated with Compeat accounts receivable. Employee expense accounts are automatically posted to accounts payable. Rents calculated in a separate application are also easily posted to accounts payable. Morton's paperwork shuffle has been substantially reduced via the use of Compeat's document imaging feature and at Morton's request, Compeat also developed a special interface from ADP that posts payroll expenses directly to the Compeat general ledger.
Morton's has better tools to assist with their focus on decreasing labor requirements, reducing food costs, increasing controls, and improving efficiency as a result of implementing Compeat. They plan to open future restaurants with Compeat.
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Ronald M. DiNella is the chief financial officer and senior vice president for Morton's Restaurant Group, an international group of 76 upscale steakhouses. In his role as senior vice president, DiNella oversees all financial and compliance requirements for the 76 Morton's restaurants, and TREVI, the company's high-end Italian restaurant located in the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.