Delivering a Seamless Guest Experience with a Fully Integrated Digital Suite
SAP Commerce, SAP Marketing Cloud, and SAP Customer Data working in concert to seamlessly deliver an omnichannel experience to TGI Fridays guests no matter the device, channel, or source – both online and offline.
As the original casual dining bar and grill, TGI Fridays offers authentic American food and legendary drinks, served with genuine personal service. Bringing people together to socialize and celebrate the freeing and liberating spirit of “Friday” was the concept’s founding premise, from which the brand promise “In Here, It’s Always Friday” was born.
As part of its competitive strategy, TGI Fridays has, in recent years, taken an enthusiastic approach to digital engagement with customers. Their omnichannel operations have facilitated ordering online, voice ordering with Alexa including integration through the GM Marketplace, digital engagement in its brick-and-mortar locations through tablet technology, as well as social media promotions – throughout their 900+ stores. TGI Fridays has been recognized as a disruptor in the restaurant industry, winning many awards including the CIO 100 (3x), a Digital50 award, the Most Innovative Team by the International Franchise Association, and more.
The Strategy
TGI Fridays began their digital transformation in 2015 with Pivotree using SAP Commerce (at the time, Hybris), and trusted its ability to handle their robust enterprise needs – including 900+ stores world-wide, an advanced marketing team, an active social media presence, complex ordering channels, and more. With the evolution of the SAP Customer Experience portfolio, which included a move towards a more seamless integration of the stack internally, Fridays saw the opportunity to achieve a better guest experience and use the accomplishments of their commerce channel to better support their marketing channel. Fridays also required Pivotree to customize key components to deliver a branded, seamless, and enjoyable experience for guests.
Consolidation (Moving from Headless to Non-Headless)
The ecosystem of the Fridays solution involved a plethora of services provided by several companies. By upgrading to SAP Commerce 1808, Pivotree was able to:
- Replace some of the services external to SAP Commerce and thereby reduce the overall TCO;
- Support in progress enhancements to preserve the existing investment;
- Prepare the system for further consolidation while providing more advanced functionality (SAP Marketing).
Continued Support of their Trusted Partner
The needs of Fridays aligned with the capabilities of Pivotree (a long-time SAP Customer Experience System Integrator) and their partners. Having worked together for several years Pivotree was uniquely positioned to understand their current and future business needs and provide the best advice. The analysis resulted in a decision to continue the strong working relationship with Fridays to deliver this and future projects.
Quick Summary
- Data Migration from different sources, including manual processes
- Developing a single, pan-organizational catalog that would be compatible with existing in-restaurant systems
- As the new site needed to be introduced in hundreds of locations, time to market was a challenge
- Business process reengineering meant ensuring all staff at individual locations received training on the new processes
- Needed to ensure that all franchisees were engaged in the transition, to effect the speed of deployments
The SAP Customer Experience Project
TGI Fridays began their digital transformation in 2015 with Pivotree using SAP Commerce (at the time, Hybris), and trusted its ability to handle their robust enterprise needs – including 900+ stores world-wide, an advanced marketing team, an active social media presence, complex ordering channels, and more. With the evolution of the SAP Customer Experience portfolio, which included a move towards a more seamless integration of the stack internally, Fridays saw the opportunity to achieve a better guest experience and use the accomplishments of their commerce channel to better support their marketing channel. Fridays also required Pivotree to customize key components to deliver a branded, seamless, and enjoyable experience for guests.
The following features and functionality were part of the project:
- Upgrading SAP Commerce from 6.2 to 1808
- Leveraging SmartEdit technology as the CMS (SAP Commerce 6.2 was still dependent on WMS) – which included the website front-end redesign
- Replacing Salesforce ExactTarget with SAP Marketing Cloud
- Building customizations for advanced personalization through SAP Marketing Cloud and SAP Customer Data Cloud
- A hybrid hosting approach – SAP Commerce and Customer Data on-premise, and SAP Marketing Cloud on SAP Cloud
- Incorporating ongoing enhancements and support services
The Timeline
The project started in early 2018, beginning with the implementation of SAP Customer Data Cloud. Between October 2018 and February 2019, Pivotree upgraded SAP Commerce to 1808, followed by the conversion from headless to non-headless. This introduced SmartEdit as the CMS. The customer also took this opportunity to refresh their website look and feel when they transferred the UI to SAP Commerce. Along with this upgrade, Pivotree was able to complete the integration of SAP Customer Data to provide the foundation for customer preferences. SAP Marketing Cloud was delivered by June 2019, and the project will continue with planned evolution of the overall functionality – taking advantage of the power of SAP Customer Experience as a suite. For example, in the summer of 2019, Pivotree continued to follow Fridays’ plan for a lower TCO by replacing Salesforce ExactTarget’s confirmation, abandoned cart, and other emails with built-in functionality from SAP Marketing.
The Technical Solution
The new TGI Fridays site uses SmartEdit as a CMS, bridging the interaction between Marketing and Commerce, and managing the menus and guest services for over 900 locations.
SAP Commerce
- Version 1808
- SAP SmartEdit
SAP Marketing Cloud
- Version 1902
SAP Customer Data
The Impact
Releases to date were delivered to customer satisfaction and have exceeded their expectations.
The result is a seamless experience across Commerce and Marketing, held together with a single view of the Fridays guest in their Customer Data hub. With SAP Customer Data, they were able to more effectively record and retain guests’ information, and with SAP Commerce and SAP Marketing, they could use that information for better service, no matter their place in the conversion pipeline – from anonymous to known. Incredibly, this can be administered from a single place using SmartEdit.
Fridays continues to work with partners that help them decrease TCO while delivering more value to the business and their guests. This project lowered TCO by moving to non-headless, leveraging top-of-class SAP technologies such as SmartEdit, SAP Customer Data and SAP Marketing Cloud.
Having established their restaurants as leaders in the industry space – with innovative strategies, technology, and culture since the 1960s, Fridays continues to deliver on its brand promise to guests. Allowing guests to interact with their brand freely across every channel, knowing they’ll be delivering a personalized experience at every touchpoint, means they can deliver the promise of Fridays in every guest engagement.
Fridays’ digital transformation would not have been possible without Pivotree’s knowledge of the SAP suite of products and their ability to be agile given our short timeline.