IS425 Digital Transformation Strategy (G1)
Project Title:
Digital Transformation Strategy using Salesforce
Executive summary
Historically serving as a place for Singaporeans to eat affordable local cuisine and
enjoy communal dining, hawker centres and food courts are a key part of Singapore’s
food culture. However, the hawker centre model sees many challenges that threaten its
sustainability. These range from rising costs, customers’ reluctance to pay higher
prices, and operational obstacles that reduce efficiency and impact customer
experience. Amid all this, there are opportunities to address many of these issues,
particularly with strong change management and technological solutions.
This report will explore the ways information technology (IT) can be used to add
business value to the Koufu Group as a hawker centre and food court operator, improve
the customer experience, and benefit the lives of hawkers in Singapore. This solution
would come in the form of a proposed enterprise information systems (EIS) solution
using features available on the Salesforce platform.
To inform the proposed recommendations, primary research was conducted in the form
of interviews. Hawker centre customers, hawker stall owners, and an Outlet Manager
from the Koufu Group (Grove Café) were interviewed to better understand needs and
challenges. Secondary research also supplemented these findings.
Business Context
Food courts and hawker centres in Singapore are known for offering a wide range of stalls
selling food, drinks and desserts at affordable prices. Food courts are typically air-conditioned,
located at malls, and have slightly higher prices than hawker centres, which are open-air and
typically located at residential areas. Key players in the industry include Koufu Group,
Kopitiam, Food Junction, and Food Republic (Lim, 2010). These operators earn their revenue
through the leases that stall owners pay to cover rent, management fees, and other services
like centralised dishwashing.
Profit margins for stall owners are notoriously slim, with some reporting margins as low as
$0.20 per dish (Ng, 2018), due to Singaporeans’ reluctance to pay more despite rising costs.
This raises the need for operational efficiency to maintain the sustainability of the business
model and well-being of hawker stall owners, which has led to the use of technology to
streamline activities and add value to both the business and customers.
, For example, food courts have been increasingly adopting cashless payments due to the
rollout of unified e-payment systems (Wong & Heng, 2019), though many hawkers still operate
with cash-only. Cashless payments often make payments faster, resulting in shorter queues
and greater convenience for customers. The benefits of technology like cashless payments
shows that there are opportunities to use IT to further improve the capabilities and efficiency
in the industry, especially with hawker centres.
Business-IT Capabilities & Solution Rationale
For hawker centre and food court operators like Koufu, the IT solution provided via Salesforce
will aim to achieve three key business objectives:
1) Increase operational efficiency
Primary research was conducted in the form of visits to four different hawker centres in addition
to interviews with hawkers, customers, and an Outlet Manager from the Koufu Group (Grove
by Koufu). Findings from this research show that many of the key pain points experienced by
customers and hawkers alike can be found in obstacles encountered during business
operations; customers indicated that major inconveniences lie in factors such as long wait
times and a lack of information online, while hawkers and the Outlet Manager indicated their
obstacles lie in factors such as long queues during peak hours, lack of automation for tasks
like cutting off online orders, and the lack of an effective solution to obtain customer feedback.
In the short-term, the proposed Salesforce solution will aim to address some of the most
pressing operational challenges, namely the long queues and wait times. This was chosen
since all interviewees (hawkers, customers, and the Outlet Manager) had this factor
universally listed as a top concern. The Salesforce solution addresses this using an app which
allows for centralised ordering, order-to-collect, and e-payment to reduce queues.
In the long-term, the Salesforce solution will offer an integrated platform to connect Koufu’s
payment processing, customer relationship management, analytics, communications, and
automation systems to offer a streamlined experience for both staff and customers. This will
greatly increase both the operational efficiency for day-to-day tasks, and the scalability of
Koufu’s IT systems.
2) Empower data-driven decision-making and data literacy at all levels
According to the interview with the Outlet Manager, Koufu does use data to inform some of its
business decisions, such as when to offer discounts for particular food items when customers
opt for take-away. However, all data-driven decisions are made top-down, meaning higher
management analyses the data points and gives the directives for Outlet Managers, hawkers,
and other staff to follow.
While this is important for higher-level decisions related to strategy, this process can be slow,
and the lack of transparency in decisions made from the top can cause confusion or
1
Project Title:
Digital Transformation Strategy using Salesforce
Executive summary
Historically serving as a place for Singaporeans to eat affordable local cuisine and
enjoy communal dining, hawker centres and food courts are a key part of Singapore’s
food culture. However, the hawker centre model sees many challenges that threaten its
sustainability. These range from rising costs, customers’ reluctance to pay higher
prices, and operational obstacles that reduce efficiency and impact customer
experience. Amid all this, there are opportunities to address many of these issues,
particularly with strong change management and technological solutions.
This report will explore the ways information technology (IT) can be used to add
business value to the Koufu Group as a hawker centre and food court operator, improve
the customer experience, and benefit the lives of hawkers in Singapore. This solution
would come in the form of a proposed enterprise information systems (EIS) solution
using features available on the Salesforce platform.
To inform the proposed recommendations, primary research was conducted in the form
of interviews. Hawker centre customers, hawker stall owners, and an Outlet Manager
from the Koufu Group (Grove Café) were interviewed to better understand needs and
challenges. Secondary research also supplemented these findings.
Business Context
Food courts and hawker centres in Singapore are known for offering a wide range of stalls
selling food, drinks and desserts at affordable prices. Food courts are typically air-conditioned,
located at malls, and have slightly higher prices than hawker centres, which are open-air and
typically located at residential areas. Key players in the industry include Koufu Group,
Kopitiam, Food Junction, and Food Republic (Lim, 2010). These operators earn their revenue
through the leases that stall owners pay to cover rent, management fees, and other services
like centralised dishwashing.
Profit margins for stall owners are notoriously slim, with some reporting margins as low as
$0.20 per dish (Ng, 2018), due to Singaporeans’ reluctance to pay more despite rising costs.
This raises the need for operational efficiency to maintain the sustainability of the business
model and well-being of hawker stall owners, which has led to the use of technology to
streamline activities and add value to both the business and customers.
, For example, food courts have been increasingly adopting cashless payments due to the
rollout of unified e-payment systems (Wong & Heng, 2019), though many hawkers still operate
with cash-only. Cashless payments often make payments faster, resulting in shorter queues
and greater convenience for customers. The benefits of technology like cashless payments
shows that there are opportunities to use IT to further improve the capabilities and efficiency
in the industry, especially with hawker centres.
Business-IT Capabilities & Solution Rationale
For hawker centre and food court operators like Koufu, the IT solution provided via Salesforce
will aim to achieve three key business objectives:
1) Increase operational efficiency
Primary research was conducted in the form of visits to four different hawker centres in addition
to interviews with hawkers, customers, and an Outlet Manager from the Koufu Group (Grove
by Koufu). Findings from this research show that many of the key pain points experienced by
customers and hawkers alike can be found in obstacles encountered during business
operations; customers indicated that major inconveniences lie in factors such as long wait
times and a lack of information online, while hawkers and the Outlet Manager indicated their
obstacles lie in factors such as long queues during peak hours, lack of automation for tasks
like cutting off online orders, and the lack of an effective solution to obtain customer feedback.
In the short-term, the proposed Salesforce solution will aim to address some of the most
pressing operational challenges, namely the long queues and wait times. This was chosen
since all interviewees (hawkers, customers, and the Outlet Manager) had this factor
universally listed as a top concern. The Salesforce solution addresses this using an app which
allows for centralised ordering, order-to-collect, and e-payment to reduce queues.
In the long-term, the Salesforce solution will offer an integrated platform to connect Koufu’s
payment processing, customer relationship management, analytics, communications, and
automation systems to offer a streamlined experience for both staff and customers. This will
greatly increase both the operational efficiency for day-to-day tasks, and the scalability of
Koufu’s IT systems.
2) Empower data-driven decision-making and data literacy at all levels
According to the interview with the Outlet Manager, Koufu does use data to inform some of its
business decisions, such as when to offer discounts for particular food items when customers
opt for take-away. However, all data-driven decisions are made top-down, meaning higher
management analyses the data points and gives the directives for Outlet Managers, hawkers,
and other staff to follow.
While this is important for higher-level decisions related to strategy, this process can be slow,
and the lack of transparency in decisions made from the top can cause confusion or
1
