Starboard Group’s ambitious growth meant that they were managing over 30 databases separately, resulting in poor visibility across all entities, time-consuming processes, inconsistent data, and an inability to handle intercompany transactions.
The Starboard Group is a leader in the franchise industry ranked among the top 100 franchisees in the United States. They currently operate over 182 Wendy’s restaurants in the Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin markets.
When the Starboard Group first began using Microsoft Dynamics in 2009, it only operated a fraction of the restaurants that it owns today. As they scaled, it became clear that this ERP was not enough to meet the company’s growing demands. Giovanni Lima, CFO at the Starboard Group, needed a new solution to implement Starboard’s three-year strategic plan effectively. Running a small team of high-performing individuals gives Starboard a competitive edge. Therefore, ensuring the team does not get bogged down with system or application limitation is a priority. This is consistent with Starboard’s decision to scale down to then properly scale up.
“I knew that with our company’s aggressive growth targets over the next few years, we would desperately need a better solution. We just needed a stable and scalable platform for growth without having to re invent the entire system. The overhead and inefficiencies of managing over 30 databases separately was onerous and just not scalable to our business model.”
— Giovanni Lima, CFO
“The team knew that 200-300% growth in two years was going to prove to be an ambitious target by itself. The team wanted to ensure that the Starboard Group would not be held back by its ERP system.”
— Giovanni Lima, CFO
To hit its ambitious annual growth targets of 200-300%, Starboard Group implemented Multi-Entity Management (MEM). Switching to MEM eliminated productivity issues and streamlined intercompany processes. They consolidated their operations in a scalable manner, giving them a centralized system for payables and receivables. As a result, the company is now more efficient with its available resources.
“Backing up data, reporting, adding new restaurants—it was all challenging, to say the least. Multi-Entity Management was the only solution on the market that could do what we needed.”
— Giovanni Lima, CFO
“Being able to easily access and pull reports across all companies and entities within a database enables us to plan for growth and achieve profitability targets more effectively.”
— Giovanni Lima, CFO
