Ciao BUCA!

Lawson Software representatives today announced that BUCA, a US $250 million Italian restaurant chain, is standardizing on the Lawson Windows-based ERP system. The move by BUCA is to be undertaken in order to replace disparate applications and manual processes with a single, integrated system.

The software will be deployed on four Hewlett-Packard servers, including two ML570s for production and development, and two DL380s for the database and business intelligence applications. The software will run on a combination of Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server, and will be served to the company’s 104 restaurants using a VPN and Web portal software.

Disparate programs listed by BUCA vice president / chief accounting officer Dennis Goetz in press material includes legacy computer systems, Microsoft’s Solomon accounting systems, the Sage Software’s fixed asset accounting system, and numerous spreadsheets. Lawson Software’s centralization process seeks to harmonize BUCA’s financial management, supply chain management, and business intelligence suites as well as the requisite streamlining of data collection.

Personally heading up the implementation process, Goetz explained that one of the major changes being implemented with the Lawson system was to automate the integration between systems. Lawson will be receiving automated feeds from the point-of-sale system, involving payroll, store-level accounting, accounts payable and receivable, and from the bank itself; store-level profit and loss statements and financial reporting will now come from Lawson. St. Paul, Minn.-based Lawson Software was formed in April 2006 via the merger of Lawson and Intentia.

Lawson is a CRM software provider specializing in service industries, healthcare, manufacturing, and distribution. Lawson applications are today used by over 4,000 customers in 20 languages in 41 countries.