Cathy O’Sullivan 00:06
Hello. Welcome to CIO Leadership Live Australia. I’m Cathy O’Sullivan, Editorial Director for Foundry in Australia and New Zealand. My guest today is Nazih Battal, who is the Chief Information and Technology Officer at Rashays. Welcome to the podcast, Nazih. I appreciate you being with us today.
Nazih Battal 00:26
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Cathy O’Sullivan 00:29
Great stuff. I love to hear about CIOs’ origin stories. So can you tell us about how you got your own start in technology and what have been some of the highlights of your career so far?
Nazih Battal 00:42
Sure look, I started. I actually remember when I started, it was, I was in the last year of uni, you know, I had six months left to go at uni, and I just had enough of studying. So I was… obviously wanted to finish my degree, but I was really keen to get into the workforce. So I got my first job as a tech support, first and second level support for a radiology company that had about 30 to 40 sites across the state. Great job, you know, hands on, met with the customers. You know, it was a, you know, was back in the day when, you know IT was, wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now. So, yeah, it was a great experience. You know, drove around to a lot of hospitals around the state, met a lot of great people. So yeah, obviously my career just transitioned from there, from that kind of tech support, and over time, you know, working my way through that. Look some of the highlights of my career. I think I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve worked on some pretty big global projects around the world. I’ve had the opportunity to travel a lot, you know, I’ve gone to some amazing places, you know, I’ve done projects in the US, across Asia, across Europe. And obviously, one of the main highlights, I think, was I was involved heavily with FIFA, the FIFA World Cup that took place two years ago now. So working on some of the, you know, the stadiums and some of the infrastructure that was required for for Qatar to deliver that. So, yeah, that was, that was some of the highlights, I think, across the last couple of years.
Cathy O’Sullivan 02:13
Fabulous. Yeah, that must have been a fascinating project to be part of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. So you’re back in Australia, and you’re now Chief Information and Technology Officer at Rashays, so tell us about the business you know, its mission and purpose, and how you and the team support that.
Nazih Battal 02:30
Sure. Look, Rashays is very unique. Rashays has always been about the customer experience, and that is one thing that has been driven down by the founders and leadership team pretty much from the from the day I came in. It’s about making sure that customer experience is is ideal, from the minute they walk into to one of our locations and post the experience. Rashays has over 40 locations across Australia at the moment, and there, obviously, there are plans to expand internationally. We feed over 4.3 million people a year who come into our stores. Obviously technology and IT play a big part in your overall customer experience. We play everything from when customers order online, they order through the mobile app, even things like even managing our inventory. We have a major central kitchen here that manufactures a lot of the food as well. So obviously we’re working from end to end, everything from inventory to ordering to supplier management, vendor management, and even the customer experience, which, like I said, is from ordering even to the dining experience that they have at one of our stores.
Cathy O’Sullivan 03:36
So how does your role differ, I guess, from other industries that you’ve worked in, what have you noticed about the hospitality sector that may be different or similar to some of your previous industries?
Nazih Battal 03:50
Sure, look. Some of the other industries I’ve worked in are things like healthcare, professional services, finance, etc. Look, each one is different and each one is unique. I think the thing with hospitality that I found over the last couple of years, there is a lot of change in consumer demand, which is different than other organizations, whereby a consumer demand can change. What is popular today is not popular tomorrow, and was popular last week will not be popular in six months time. So there are a lot of type of fads, and items need to be moved quickly. And products need to be delivered quickly. So in the event that, you know, there’s a new menu item or something needs to change quite quickly, you’re looking at getting that done as quick as possible. You know, our systems are working with the with the development team to have you know the menu is prepared. You know the inventory management is done. All the updates across all the platforms needs to be done quite quickly. So, yeah, it’s a very agile and very quick to cater for that consumer demand as it comes in. The other one is where we differentiate is we’re always looking at how we’re different than our competitors. When you look at something like healthcare, I mean, when you’re looking at a big player like healthcare, you have your Phillips, you have your GE you have your Siemens, you have those big players. From a hospitality point of view, your players are everywhere, so consumers have a lot of choice. So it is always a case of, how do we put in that competitive advantage? How are we different from the competitor? If a customer does not come to us, they have 1000 other options that they can choose from. So really it is about always looking at how we differentiate ourselves from our competitors. And I think the only last one I would touch into is, how do we always enhance the customer experience, but to have that customer as a repeat customer, the reason I say I mean looking at our membership and the customers who dine in with us. We have customers who come in every day. We have customers that come in weekly. We have customers that come in every six months. How do we put in place those processes? How do we put in place those tools to make sure that a we understand what the customer concerns are, and how do we make sure that they’re a repeat customer. In the hospitality industry, customers are very fickle, and they have a lot of choices, so it’s about getting, grabbing that customer and making sure they’re a constant repeat customer. So that’s, I think, the key differences between that and other sectors.
Cathy O’Sullivan 06:10
So take us through then, what have been some of the notable achievements of the team in recent years?
Nazih Battal 06:16
Sure, I think I’ll break it back into two parts. You know, the the achievements for our customers, who are the people who come in and dine with us. We rolled out, obviously, a membership reward system for the customers, which gives people access to virtual currency. So that’s one thing where there is a there, I guess there’s a psychological, psychology around people who see virtual money coming in, coming back, repeat customers. So that’s one thing. We’ve also rolled out a new mobile app for our customers as well, which ties into the membership, and we’ve integrated that with platforms like Apple and Google Pay and so on. So we’ve started to roll that out across for all our customers. One of the things that we had with the mobile app is, unfortunately, the mobile app that we had was pretty archaic, and like I said, when competing with agile competitors, and who are some of them who are quite global, you need to be able to provide a solution that is simple to use, secure, and it gives people the you know what they’re looking for, which is, like I said, now everyone’s moving to Google and Apple Pay. So those are some of the things that we’ve delivered for our customers who dine in. I think, from a business and a technology point of view, we put a lot of effort over the last couple of years to move from a what was a bit of a legacy on premise system, to a cloud-based consumption model. We’ve moved over 80% of our environment to that. And why we like the consumption-based model is because our business has a lot of peaks and troughs. So when you get to the kind of events, like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas, all these other events, we need to be able to scale up very quickly our environment. And so we’ve been able to do that by moving to that consumption-based model. The other one, and this is a key one that we’ve delivered, is we’re starting to actually provide reporting and dashboards for the business. We’re able now to provide that data that’s been missing in the past. You know, what are your sales? What are your sales versus last year? You know, what are your members habits? You know, all this is per location, per store. So we’ve become a lot more agile. We’re starting to be able to show those dashboards to say how the stores are performing, you know, where they’ve performed, versus certain metrics, what their labour is in the store, their productivity. And we’re also able now to actually start, because we provide these dashboards, we’re actually now able to show and start to put in place metrics. I’m a big fan of if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. So now we’re able to actually measure these things, and the business is coming back saying, Oh, great, okay, I understand my labour, I understand my wastage, I understand my food cost. I’m now able to measure and put in place KPIs for other departments to meet it.
Cathy O’Sullivan 08:59
So you mentioned that you rolled out that new mobile app, and obviously, a lot more people are paying with things like Apple Pay and Google Pay. But what else are you using from a technology perspective to enhance that customer engagement and experience?
Nazih Battal 09:15
Sure, I’ll give you one example, and this is an example that people don’t understand that it’s technology in the back end, using it. So a customer who customer who comes to us now and decides to book for a group of, say, six, they’ll come in and they’ll go online, they’ll enter their details, booking for six people at this store, at this location, submit. An SMS goes to that customer straight away, saying, Look, we’re confirming your booking. Thank you for booking with us. Please click here if you have any additional details or click here to cancel, and an email goes to that customer as well. After that message goes out, 24 hours before they come and dine, they get another communication from us, and that communication is just to once again, validate and confirm that they are attending. Have you forgotten anything? Has the number of people changed? You know? What other information do you want to give us? Is it, is it a special occasion? For example, you know? Is it a is it a birthday? What you know? What are the special occasions? Do you have a specific seating arrangement in place or in mind that you want? So that’s all done to kind of get the customer experience ready before they arrive in the in the location. Then that, you know, obviously they come in, they dine in, and once they leave our store, we also request feedback, and the feedback is designed to see how was their experience in store. So obviously, the feedback communication goes out to the to the customer who’s dined in with us, and they will provide their feedback based on, you know, certain aspects, you know, how was the location of the restaurant? How was your seating, how was the customer service, and so on and so forth. What we’ve actually done now, even with that feedback now, is it comes into a a system like a, effectively, a CRM system that we have now in house, whereby that is then looked at by the customer service team, and the customer service team then assign that to the key departments who then actually, you know, effectively, go through it, understand what went wrong, liaise with the store to rectify what what happened, and also reach out to the customer direct to understand, okay, how was your experience? And then only once all that is done and signed off, then those tickets get closed. So in a way, we’re providing a full end to end experience for the customer. And effectively, technology plays a key part, from the first message right until, you know, the customer is engaged, their problem or this or their satisfaction is addressed with the customer service. And then we’re reporting on that as well, to understand which stores are getting, you know, positive feedback, negative feedback, and how we’re tracking with those stores to make sure either they improve or they keep doing a great job.
Cathy O’Sullivan 11:50
Hopefully they’re getting lots of good feedback as well. So look technology when you are rolling it out, you know, you have quite a lot of stakeholders in your organization. Obviously, you’ve got your frontline staff, you’ve got people in the kitchen, you’ve got your servers, your corporate staff, as well as a range of different customer types. You know some may not be as tech savvy as others. So how do you ensure that adoption of those new technologies that you are introducing, both internally, and with your customers.
Nazih Battal 12:24
Sure, look from an internal point of view we rolled out an LMS system, which is a learning management system called Rashays Academy. And effectively, what that is, it’s a training platform for all our staff, and it breaks down into the division that or the department that the person is in. So everything from kitchen staff on how they prepare a certain dish, the measurements for these dishes. For IT, you know, for people to do basic IT courses, you know, obviously governance, ethics, all these sorts of things are put into that Rashays Academy. Rashays Academy is available through an app so we encourage all staff who start up to actually get access to either the app or login, and they’re all giving a login. There are courses that are mandatory that they need to complete, you know, things like governance, ethics, etc. There are mandatory courses based on the department you’re in. So obviously, if you are a kitchen staff, or you’re a warehouse staff and so on and so forth, there are specific courses that are mandatory. So that’s how we kind of get the upskilling in-house and to make sure that they’re adopted. So they’re starting to adopt that and they’re starting to see how that system works. For customers, I guess, from a customer point of view, we send out a lot of push notifications through the mobile app. We send out email and SMS campaigns to all our customers and emails to make sure that they’re aware of the technology, you know, the mobile app and so on and so forth. There’s been a real driver in the stores since we rolled out the membership platform earlier in the year to actually for staff to engage with our customers, you know help them download the app, help them sign up as a member. That’s seen us drive from almost no members to over 100,000 members in the space of, I think, seven, eight months. So that’s been a real driver and and from a customer point of view, we wanted to make it as simple as possible. We didn’t want you know, from a when you’re ordering from our app or you’re being a member, we want to make it as simple as possible. You know, it’s nice. It’s simple. You know, your order, select your location, pick up delivery, that’s it. So customers are adopting. We’ve seen a great uptake over the last probably seven months, and it’s purely organic growth at the moment. So because it’s organic growth, we’ve, you know, we’re confident that, okay, because it’s organic growth, you know, the tool is doing what it needs to do, and it is simple to use as well.
Cathy O’Sullivan 14:42
Now I know cybersecurity is the top concern of every CIO in every industry, but talk us through, I guess, your challenges when it comes to maintaining cybersecurity and protecting that data. You’ve got a lot of customer data, and of course your own company data. What’s your approach?
Nazih Battal 15:03
Look it is a challenge. I’m not going to lie. Data is really key, and you have, you have a major responsibility to your customers and to the business to make sure that data is kept secure. We’ve seen big players impacted, you know, the likes of, you know, Medibank, Optus, there’s been some really big players who are impacted, and it shows that the smallest mistake, the slightest policy not being prepared, or something, can cause that kind of problem. So what we’ve done is, when we moved to our cloud-based infrastructure and set up, we’ve started to sign up to a lot more subscription security products, which we didn’t have before. Because when you have, when you have that kind of hardware based on premise, over time, three to five years, there’s going to be new technology that has better subscriptions, better, you know, better ways to protect you. So by moving to that kind of cloud based we’ve been able to pick the technology that we want from a security point of view, and we work with that vendor to make sure it’s constantly updated. Policies are reviewed and making sure that any sort of traffic that we see that is not business traffic is either blocked or investigated. Internally, we’ve started to put in place a lot of policies and procedures around how we do things, yes, along security and along even day to day operations. And the reason for that is because, once you have that kind of clear policies and procedures, you are able to understand, you know, what do we want to do? How do we do it? And we make sure that every staff member is accountable for that as well. Tying into that, we’ve also come up with a business continuity and disaster recovery plan to make sure that in the event of an impact to a location or to the business, we have clear mechanisms in place and a clear plan that we’ve already drilled on how we’re going to recover from that. We obviously focus a lot on training and with the LMS system that we have, we you know, some of the mandatory courses for our staff are the cyber security. You know how can they catch things? Emails that they get, phishing attempts always validate with the user before you get any anything. And I guess the last things is we you know, obviously, MFA, multi factor authentication across the whole business is key, because a lot of the attacks are coming in from compromised accounts that are coming in. So that’s been one of the things that we’ve seen has made a big difference. And I guess the last thing is, once you put all these things in place, it’s about continuous improvement. So we as an organization are moving towards ISO certification in security. So we’re going down that journey, I guess. And security is a journey. Security is not something that you can just put in place and forget. Security is a journey, and it’s a constant one. So us as an organization, we’re moving towards ISO7001 and we’re looking at all these other kinds of, you know, even government recommended mandates in place just to make sure that we are as secure and stable as possible as an organization.
Cathy O’Sullivan 18:00
Yeah, and great point there. There’s no end to cyber is there? It’s a team sport, and it’s always going to be on the agenda. And so take us through Nazih your approach when it comes to prioritization, I mean, how did you decide what you’re going to invest in? How do you align your tech strategy with that overall business strategy?
Nazih Battal 18:24
We have something at Rashays, which is really good. We have something called the three pillars. And what we as a leadership team came up with, we said, look, we as a business are going to have three pillars, and the pillars are effectively Service, Food and Brand. And what we did is any initiative that we as a leadership team, or one of the leadership team initiated was to align to one of those pillars. So does your business initiative improve our service? Does it improve our food, or does it improve our branding, as you know, out in the market? So based on those, those are kind of the key criteria that is put in place to the business. If it meets, obviously, any of those criteria, or more than one. That’s how we then, as a technical, you know, a digital partner, we then focus on that. So when they came up, you know, we were discussing, for example, the mobile app, etc. Yes, it improves our brand. It improves the service that we give to our customers. And that was one of the things that we said as a leadership team and said, Yes, that is an initiative that we see value in. Our membership rewards, again, it improves our brand, and so on and so forth. So I guess we always sit when we sit as a leadership team, I think from a business and a technology point of view, we’re aligning those three band brands, those three pillars, sorry, as the key fundamentals that we all have to adhere to before an initiative is put in place.
Cathy O’Sullivan 19:46
Yeah, always good to have that guiding light of where you’re investing your time and energy into. So what role do partnerships play in your overall IT strategy? I mean, what do you look for when you’re going out to market, you’re deciding which technology vendor or MSP that you partner up with? What’s important to you?
Nazih Battal 20:07
I think, from an MSP point of view, or a partner point of view. The key thing for me, that I found over time is you’re looking for a partner. You’re not looking for a vendor. And the thing for me is I found too many vendors. It becomes purely transactional. You know, you pay for a service. You get it when you need it, and that’s it. For me, if a partner or a vendor doesn’t understand my business, doesn’t understand it, to the point that when I call up or someone raises a concern with them. They need to understand. They need to understand how that impacts our day-to-day operations. A partner will understand your business the same as you do. And what I found with a lot of partners is if they don’t understand when you call them up, that, okay, this service is down, they need to be able to say, oh, okay, this service is down. It means one, two and three is impacted. Not many vendors are like that, but I guess that’s the kind of conversation I have with partners and vendors when we start out saying that, look, I’m looking for a partner, someone who understands the business the same as me, or else it becomes purely transactional. And if it’s going to be purely transactional, then it’s something that you may be changing every time you go and RFP, every you know, 12, 24, 36 months. So for me, really, it is about the key of them understanding my business, partnering with our business, or else, like I said, it just becomes purely transactional.
Cathy O’Sullivan 21:33
And what emerging tech do you think will have the biggest impact on your industry hospitality in the coming years? Is there anything coming down the line that you’re excited about?
Nazih Battal 21:43
Well, like cybersecurity, everyone’s talking about AI. Look, AI is a big thing. It’s still very much in its infancy. Look, I love the idea of AI. I think there are still some concerns around governance and how AI is going to be used, what kind of data is kept with AI? You know, everyone’s seen those kinds of comical things, you know, out on the net, which is showing how AI responds to certain areas. So there’s still some work to be done. Like I said, governance is still an issue, but I think AI will really help. The hospitality industry always faces a challenge with staff shortages, especially based on how the economy is going. So I see us using AI to, you know, do things like manage customer feedback. You know, answer and respond to phone calls. I’ve even seen, you know, there’s technology out there now where AI, conversational AI is answering calls, responding to customers, dealing with day to day. You know, things like taking bookings and answering queries, and even things like more intuitive online chats with AI, who understand a bit more will understand your you know, you’re a member. You’re not a member, your habits, etc. So look, I think it has a lot of potential. I see AI as really driving those kinds of things, but the question is whether the maturity is there yet, and you know what it can and can’t do, and what you should and shouldn’t do with it. So I see a lot of potential with that.
Cathy O’Sullivan 23:09
And now that you’re back in Australia after a period of time, over in the Middle East. And what do you think are some of the biggest challenges, I guess, facing IT leaders in Australia in the coming years?
Nazih Battal 23:24
Look, you mentioned it earlier. Security is a major one. You’ve seen a lot of state-based actors, who are, you know, who this is, their job, effectively, trying to impact organizations, steal data, you know, even attack governments. So that, look, that goes without saying, cybersecurity is a challenge, and it’s something that’s gonna, like I said earlier, it’s a journey. It’s something that we’ll have to keep adopting. Will have to keep enhancing. And I think as more and more people engage together on the security, on the security front, I think eventually it will stabilize a lot more than it is now. Because, like I said, security is still a relatively new field. It’s only been there for a couple of years. When you compare it to overall it, so security is a big one. Another one, which is a bit controversial, I think, but this is, this is the one that I like to always talk about, is, how is IT managing cost versus quality. And when I talk about that, for me, starting in IT, you know, being that customer kind of tech support person, I’m a big advocate for customer service. And what we’ve seen over IT, I think, for you know, many years now, is there is that cost versus quality. You know, they’re looking at managing costs and making, you know, IT costs to be, you know, very cost efficient, but you’re losing a lot of that quality as well in what you deliver to businesses. I’ve seen in some organizations where you know you want to be the most cost-efficient IT department you can but then you have SLAs, where if a staff member is impacted, you’re looking at eight-hour response time. And yes, you know, people can say, Oh, well, we as a business accept that risk, you know. And they’ll always say when they’re going to sign the contract, and there’s this genuine cost saving. But on the other hand, you need to say, Well, okay, how is that really going to work in the real world, when you have a finance manager who is impacted and can’t work for eight hours, you know, doesn’t really translate into into, you know, real benefit to the business. So, I think that’s a conversation that people need to start having. There is obviously a, you know, there’s huge advantages to outsourcing, and there’s huge advantages to keeping core teams in house. So, I guess that’s one of the things I think that leaders now need to start having that conversation that we want to make sure that we have a cost-effective department, but we also need to make sure that the quality and the customer service doesn’t drop. So I think that’s one that I see, you know, a challenge I see as organizations look at either reducing costs or they’re having big, you know, inflated teams onshore that you need to look at, okay, how can we make sure that we still delivering a great service to our customers, but we can move a lot of maybe non-essential services offshore.
Cathy O’Sullivan 26:06
Yeah, it’s a great point. That whole argument of costs versus value and when you invest and how you make sure the business keeps running and not making those short-sighted decisions, yeah, great points, right there. So then finally, what’s important to you, Nazih, in the months ahead?
Nazih Battal 26:24
The months ahead… Look, I think it’s more known the global economy is being… going through a bit of a challenge at the moment, and hospitality is at the you know, is really at the forefront of that. Really impacted from that. I think for us, what we’re looking at now is really about the tools and the data to help drive key business decisions. For us, it is about we’re providing that data to the business now to be able to say, Okay, this promotion, we did it. How did it go? You know, this product that we have, how was it selling 12 months versus today? What are our member habits? You know, how what are our members dining in what are they getting? You know, obviously, member habits are different per location as well, per state, per location. So there’s a lot of it’s a lot right now about understanding that data, translating that data in a way that is easy to understand, and to start to set those kind of KPIs against it. I think hopefully over the next couple of months, once we start to the global economy, obviously starts to recover. We’re looking at this opportunity to kind of stabilize a lot of the services and the systems that we have, because I think there is a real opportunity for growth internationally as a business, and having those kinds of metrics, those dashboards, those tools in place will help drive the growth internationally and even regionally. So, yeah, it’s more about understanding where we are today, really providing quick data dashboards to be able to make decisions quickly and efficiently.
Cathy O’Sullivan 27:55
Well, I look forward to catching up with you in the months ahead and hearing more about those expansion plans. Nazih Battal, Chief Information and Technology Officer at Rashays, thank you so much for joining us today.
Nazih Battal 28:07
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
