Foodstuffs is the largest food retailer in New Zealand. With over 350 locations across various formats — including fuel stations, convenience stores and supermarkets — the company has a robust real estate footprint. The Foodstuffs team oversees a portfolio of $3B in property assets and $100MM in yearly spend on land, new stores, and refurbishments.
A large, diverse property portfolio means there are a lot of moving parts that go into planning, managing, and executing numerous projects. Maintaining visibility and control of all those different processes requires flexibility, strong data integrations, and robust reporting.
To meet their needs and keep all their projects running efficiently Foodstuffs relies on Quickbase. Using the no-code platform, the team has built an entire property portfolio ecosystem that can track progress across different job sites and provide in-depth reporting for every metric they need.
Before Quickbase, silos and no single source of truth led to costly delays
Steven is responsible for developing store formats, selecting building sites, overseeing construction of new stores, and maintaining existing stores.
To ensure the company’s productivity and expansion goals are being met, he needs a lot of information — and it must be accurate and up to date.
Before Quickbase, Steven struggled to understand the status of various projects.
“I would talk to five or six different people, and get five or six different answers,” he says.
Those different answers came because there were at least five teams with their own different software platforms, network servers, and varying permissions. The lack of a central source of truth created silos within the company making it difficult to access critical data or ensure that it was accurate.
Because of the siloed departments and inability to quickly access real-time data, Steven and his teams saw projects suffering. Refurbishments of existing stores faced overspending and schedule delays. New stores had their completion dates delayed, crept over budget, and impacted the forecast retail sales income.
When an external capital efficiency review reported that the organization was wasting up to 25 cents of every dollar spent on CapEx, it became clear it was time for a change.
“We were not effectively employing the CapEx we were given each year to grow and develop the property portfolio,” Steven says.
To ensure Foodstuffs delivered on their goals for expansion and maintenance of existing stores, Steven and his team knew they needed a tool that could take their work to the next level.
Quickbase empowers Foodstuffs to deliver on time and on budget
Quickbase’s no-code platform empowered the Foodstuffs team to create an entire property portfolio management ecosystem. The application tracks over 800 projects, with nearly 400 data fields for each project, and analysis available via over 150 bespoke reports. This now serves as the single source of truth for all property projects.
With all of Foodstuffs' property data now contained in one location, it is much easier to access real time insights and ensure accuracy of the reporting. The flexibility of the application means users can filter easily by development type, work stage, region, contractor, employee, and many more fields.
With the Quickbase application, they can track:
- Store performance, compliance & regulatory reporting
- Allocated capital expenditure and on-target spending
- Scope and risks for every project
- Construction timelines
- Contractor performance
- Project activity & value by region, brand, employee, contractor
Steven’s favorite aspect of the application is the “store-on-a-page” view the team created.
“This view serves as the corporate memory for all properties,” he says.
In a few seconds, his teams can dial into any store within their portfolio to understand the history, ownership, performance, or check on the status of a construction project.
The property ecosystem Steven’s teams have created has made them the source of truth for the entire organization. Stakeholders from across the business, including company execs, turn to his team for accurate data to make strategic decisions.
Since adopting Quickbase, Foodstuffs has gone from wasting 25% of every CapEx dollar spent to delivering projects consistently 5%-8% under their initial budget. They have also reduced project delays by roughly half. The teams have created accurate benchmarks that make it easier to track the progression of every single project. Additionally, their data is key for their long-term planning, informing the three and ten year plans the organization creates.
In the end, Quickbase has given Foodstuffs more trust in more accurate data. Now, it's easier to reinvest in their stores, launch new projects, and effectively serve the needs of their customers.
Quickbase is now “an indispensable part of how our property teams and key stakeholders across the business access our portfolio data and capital projects," says Steven.
