Siipiweikot: a unique family business in the restaurant industry from tampere

Siipiweikot is a restaurant and sauce manufacturing company from Tampere that has grown from a single entrepreneur to a family business with several own restaurants and a nationwide sauce brand. The company was founded in 2009 when entrepreneur Timo Pakkala started his restaurant business with a loan from his father.

In the first operating years, business focused on the restaurant business. Due to the great popularity of Siipiweikot sauce, the sauce began to be sold to other restaurateurs as well. Over time, the popularity of sauce sales has grown year by year, and today sauce can be purchased not only from Siipiweikot's online store but also from almost every grocery store.

Siipiweikot is now a nationally known family business employing about 50 people. The company currently has four own restaurants in the Tampere region. Additionally, they have two franchising restaurants, and in the future, franchising business is intended to be expanded further. The sauce business supports own use and manufactures products for sale to corporate customers, the company has hundreds of corporate customers in Finland and a few abroad.

"No information updated anywhere and that was the biggest challenge"

Anniina Patteri, Business Controller at Siipiweikot, says that the company had several good software programs in use for years. However, manually compiling data from different software for reporting and planning began to become tedious as the business grew to a certain level. When none of the software communicated smoothly with each other, fetching and combining data from multiple software had to be done manually.

Valuable working time was spent combining, calculating, and updating data. The error risk from manual work was significant. Before each monthly meeting, data was compiled daily, and combining and calculating data could take a day and sometimes another.

"No information updated anywhere and that was the biggest challenge. Such work was also slow and therefore expensive. The data was never up to date, and if an error appeared somewhere, checking the matter was time-consuming and laborious," Patteri says.

Therefore, the company decided it was time to explore modern solutions that would be integrable with each other.

Automation brings significant savings to financial and payroll administration processes and business planning and reporting

After surveying alternatives, Siipiweikot chose Procountor as their financial management software. For reporting, budgeting, and forecasting, Finadeck was selected, through whose ready-made integrations all necessary data can be automatically retrieved from Procountor, Restolution, and Työvuorovelho. Having seen the functionalities of the software, it was clear that Procountor and Finadeck enable automation of previously manual work steps.

"We liked the possibilities these software programs enabled. For example, in Procountor, different price lists and products can be saved behind customers, making financial management really smooth," Patteri notes.

Previously, the problem was software incompatibility, so now they wanted to invest in integrations and automatic data flow. Especially integrations between Procountor and Finadeck with cash register system Restolution and time tracking software Työvuorovelho are important.

"Through smooth integrations, data flow is fast and, above all, reliable. We can run all the data we need directly into Finadeck. With its help, reporting is real-time and supports us in decision-making," Patteri rejoices.

Cash register system integrations also enable smooth monitoring of revenue and other key metrics, so data doesn't need to be waited for until the end of the next month as before. With the online store integration, invoicing also happens automatically, so the number of work steps has dropped radically.

Because the company has multiple locations and different business operations, monitoring versatility is important. For example, cost center monitoring and restaurant monitoring are important so you can see how different restaurants are doing in terms of financial and operational metrics such as revenue and margins per worked hour. Additionally, restaurant-specific product and product group sales monitoring plays an important role.

The benefits of new systems are also visible in restaurants. Data entered into Työvuorovelho transfers directly to Procountor payroll, so restaurant managers can trust that salaries and payslips are correct. Previously, data had to be checked multiple times and entered manually. This saves working time and nerves at many points.

"Finadeck has really made reporting much easier when you can get everything you need with a couple of clicks"

Finadeck has helped the company a lot through up-to-date reporting. The company's CEO has also praised that an efficient and modern reporting tool has brought very concrete help to decision-making.

"Finadeck has really made reporting much easier when you can get margins from different time periods with a couple of clicks and easily compare them. Additionally, a lot of budget monitoring is done, and Finadeck's view is really clear for this because you can get the necessary data side by side. Everything we've thought to ask has succeeded in Finadeck," Patteri praises.

Finadeck's customer service also gets a top rating. "I give customer service a full 10+, because you always get an answer and the help you need. Also, any possible bugs are fixed right away, so the customer is really well taken care of," Patteri thanks.

With Finadeck's help, the development of the company's and restaurants' finances, operational metrics, and sales can be conveniently monitored. All KPIs are quickly and in real-time available with Finadeck converting data retrieved through integrations from Procountor, Restolution, and Työvuorovelho into an easily understandable format. The difference from previous Excel gymnastics is enormous.

Finadeck has also made budgeting and forecasting easier

In addition to historical data reporting, Siipiweikot uses Finadeck also for budgeting and forecasting. When running a multi-restaurant entity, forecasting takes on an important role. Where and when are employees needed and how should resources be allocated. Also, questions like where and how future investments will be financed come up from time to time. With Finadeck's help, calculations can be prepared agilely and reports can be drilled down to the operational level. Reports delivered to email also facilitate timely information acquisition.

"It was important for us that views could be customized for each user with their own level of information. Some want more details and metrics, while others don't benefit from them," Patteri notes.

Siipiweikot have designed and built monitoring reports with restaurant managers, whereby restaurant managers get all the data they want on the same report. Additionally, restaurant managers can drill down into numbers directly from their own views. Similarly, a custom view has been created for the customer manager so they can easily monitor sales. With Finadeck's help, different people's level of financial knowledge can be supported.

Modern and easy-to-use solutions help entrepreneurs

Implementation of new tools went smoothly at Siipiweikot. "Implementing Finadeck and Procountor was easy and didn't take much time. For example, transferring customer and product registers was easy and fast, but cleaning data always takes its own time. However, it's not difficult for an entrepreneur because working with the accounting firm goes smoothly," Anniina says.

According to Anniina's experience, Finadeck's onboarding training was really good because it helped understand how the tool works. Now it's easy for them to continue practicing in practice. Anniina has built composite KPIs and report templates mainly independently after training. You can do a lot yourself in Finadeck and learn and understand the software better at the same time. Finadeck can be customized according to your own needs, and help is always available when needed.

Anniina says she gladly recommends Procountor and Finadeck also to other restaurant industry companies. In the future, Siipiweikot's new franchising entrepreneurs will get a ready-made package. Patteri sees that the advantage of the current solution is that it suits not only financial management specialists but also excellently for someone to whom the world of financial management is unfamiliar.

"With Procountor and Finadeck, they can focus on their own expertise and running the restaurant," Anniina concludes.