As one of the largest franchise operators of Pizza Hut®, KFC© and Taco Bell® in North America — with more than 340 locations across Canada and the US — Franchise Management Inc. (FMI) faced the challenge of helping its store teams handle cash safely and efficiently while seeking greater cash flow visibility.
“Cash handling was becoming a huge pain point,” recalls Arlene Dore, Chief Financial Officer of FMI. “We always want to make the lives of our field staff easier, so they can maximize their time delivering exceptional service to guests, but this admin. work would get in the way. We needed two in-store people present to count the cash and, each day they had to take it to the bank so we could access this working capital. The manager could easily be spending an hour each day performing these tasks and that wasn’t a value-added activity.”
This process was costing the company around a million dollars a year in employee time, not to mention the potential costs of theft or fraud, and countless hours spent by FMI support centre staff, who checked store accounts each day to confirm the deposits or follow up on missed night deposits.
The solution: introducing Smart Safe Deposit
Smart Safe Deposit is a cash management solution that helps retailers overcome cash handling issues and gain more insight into their cash flow. These tech-enabled depository safes are equipped with bill validators so a retailer can safely store cash prior to the armoured truck pick-up, and the cash deposited in the safe is credited to a client’s account the next day. This creates back-office efficiency and protects against internal and external theft and human error. And, from a CFO’s perspective, it eliminates ‘idle cash’ sitting in a regular store safe until someone treks to the bank.
When Dore pointed out to her Atlantic Scotiabank coverage team that she was looking for a solution to solve her cash handling challenge, Angela Decoffe, Director of Payments and Cash Management, acted quickly, connecting with her product team and identifying the opportunity for FMI to pilot the Smart Safe solution for Scotiabank in Canada.
Scotiabank is continuously evolving its full suite of solutions to meet our clients’ needs. “At the centre of developing impactful solutions”, states Adam Gabriel, Vice President Global Business Payments Products, “is listening to our clients and gaining a deep understanding of their business. That knowledge equips us to develop relevant solutions that optimize working capital and drive operational efficiencies, so our clients can focus on their business.”
Scotiabank finalized a partnership with leading cash management solutions provider Garda World Cash, while FMI eagerly enlisted as Scotiabank’s first client to pilot the Smart Safe solution with an accelerated six-month timeline.
The results: a lasting uptick in savings, safety and service
Today, after driving the Smart Safe Deposit roll-out to most FMI locations, Dore praised its impact: “Our field teams bought into this very quickly since they feel safer, and it's more efficient for them. Company-wide, it’s optimized our bottom line. In our business, the guest experience is more important than ever, and Smart Safe Deposit helps us maximize everyone’s time, by taking away mundane tasks so our people can spend more time on service.”