ABOUT                     

TGI Fridays first opened in New York in 1965 with flowing cocktails and charismatic bartenders making every night feel like a Friday. Fridays UK opened its first restaurant on Hagley Road in Birmingham in 1986 and 36 years later, the American inspired restaurant and bar chain has over 80 outlets across the UK and the Channel Islands. The brand prides itself on bringing that all-important ‘Fridays Feeling’ no matter what day of the week or time of day courtesy of iconic cocktails, freshly made to order food and that iconic generosity of spirit.  

CLIENT SITUATION

In 2019, Fridays' new executive team embarked on a comprehensive review of the business and its partners. Having been with the same payroll provider for almost 15 years, an opportunity was identified to streamline processes.

Erica Livermore, Chief Technology Officer at Fridays, explained,

"Our priority was to digitise everything, including the employee experience. The existing infrastructure saw several different systems in place to manage our people so we looked for solutions to simplify this and have everything on one platform, including integration to a payroll provider.”

At Dataplan, we pride ourselves on working with our partners to deliver their specific goals. The contract was put out to tender, and Dataplan were successful.

Erica continued, “Issues we had previously encountered including a lack of flexibility and the need for us to align with a one-size-fits-all approach. With Dataplan, our relationship is collaborative, and they ensure requirements are designed around our specific needs.”

WORKING WITH DATAPLAN

Erica went on to explain what had impressed Fridays about Dataplan’s offer and approach.

“What was evident to me and the business throughout this process was that Dataplan were agile and technologically advanced. They were not one of the biggest outfits which appealed to us because they were able to work with us to solve our specific challenges.

Speaking about the set-up experience, she said,

“We were impressed by Dataplan’s consultative approach, which was very important to us as we wanted a partner who would work with us on our processes and how to improve them. Dataplan came across as not only very knowledgeable but also very open to helping us improve. There was excellent two-way communication, and the right people were involved, with the right level of expertise.

Due to a desire to get a system up and running as quickly as possible, Fridays requested to bring the change forward from April 2021 to December 2020, resulting in an implementation period of three months!”

WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH FRIDAYS HR PARTNER

Part of Fridays’ requirements was to work alongside their HR partner, Elementsuite. Our collaborative approach to working alongside Fridays’ partners meant that we were able to integrate their systems efficiently and successfully, despite the tighter than expected implementation window. The result, one place for Fridays’ employees to obtain the right and relevant information.

Erica summarised the partnership by saying,

“We are really confident about our ongoing relationship with Dataplan. The great array of talent we now have in our supplier chain positions us perfectly for our future journey.”