Creel sends a message with upgraded Taco John's technology

Nine months ago James Creel, a consultant with RSM McGladrey Inc., met with Taco John's senior vice president and chief financial officer, Barry Sims, to tell the restaurant executive what his company should be looking for in a director of technology.

Instead, Creel said, he ended up with a job offer he just couldn't refuse.

As the relatively new director of technology for the Mexican quick-serve chain, Creel heads a small, three-person team charged with bringing 10 company stores and 440 franchised units up to date technologically.

"The franchise community would like us to be more advanced technologically," Creel said. "Taco John's is now getting up to speed pretty quickly."

Creel said his first priority upon assuming his new role was to improve communication between the field and corporate headquarters. The first step was the implementation of a company intranet site -- something Creel views as "one of the primary vehicles in the future for getting training and information to our franchisees in a timely and cost-efficient manner."

Using a software package from Planet-Intra running on a Windows NT platform, Creel launched Taco John's intranet in March. Currently, 50 percent of Taco John's franchisees are up on the system as well as the company stores and corporate offices, Creel said. "The real draws are the training and education area and the weekly newsletter," he added.

Recently, the company posted its "basic standards" managerial certification test on the site, and plans call for Taco John's operations manuals and further computer-based training modules to be added in 2001.

The next step is the deployment of a Citrix Metaframe server, a move Creel said would allow Taco John's to delay the replacement of the 50 desktop personal computers in the main office while improving communications with the company's field force of 15 regional business consultants.

Each member of the field staff, whose job it is to go over food costing and operational issues with Taco John's franchisees, will have a Uunet account from Asburn, Va.-based WorldCom, which will give them local Internet access all over the country. "They can sign on and then come in through the Citrix system to run any of the applications and tools hosted at headquarters, at nearly the same speed as if they were in the office," Creel explained. The system also will help the company reduce its long-distance costs because members of the field team no longer will be dialing into the support center on a toll-free line, he added.

Also under way at Taco John's is a process of streamlining information gathering and business reporting in a technology environment Creel described as a "hodgepodge of 10 to 15 POS systems, where most of our information comes in by fax or e-mail." Enterprise software from Huntington Beach, Calif.-based Menulink Computer Solutions Inc. now is up and running in the 10 Taco John's company stores and at corporate headquarters, and the company is "working on the details of the deployment of MenuLink to the franchisees," Creel said.

"MenuLink will give us a common system for reporting," he said. "It will work with any of the POS systems and gives us a little more advanced and consistent reporting system."

Creel explained that accounting and franchise database applications currently are hosted on an IBM AS400 model 9404 at headquarters using accounting software from Florham Park, N.J.-based Software Plus and database applications written in Report Program Generator in house.

Creel is looking for other ways to improve and update Taco John's technology. He said he has looked at some e-procurement systems and eventually would like to see "online reporting for all the franchised stores via some type of [application service provider] package.

On the agenda for 2001 is an upgrade of Taco John's in-house video editing and production system and the possible implementation of streaming video via the Internet.

A sign reading, "If you are not serving the customer, you are serving someone who is," was given to Creel when he first started at Taco John's. It has served to focus his efforts to get everybody up to speed technologically, he said.

"My goal is to make technology as affordable and as useful to the franchisees as I can," he said.

Creel, who was 10 when his father was killed in a horseracing accident, said his mother was his greatest personal hero.

"She raised five children, aged 5 to 11 at the time my father died, who have all graduated from college and have gone on to be successful in their own of endeavor," Creel said. "She taught me that the greatest gift you can give is yourself to others and that anything is possible if you will just work hard at it and never give up."

Away from the office, Creel lifts weights five days a week. He helps to coach the various athletic teams of his two "very active, athletic boys," a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old, who are involved in football, golf, wrestling activities, basketball and soccer.

Creel has been married for 19 years. His wife, Brenda, teaches the sixth grade.

Name: James Creel

Company: Taco John's International Inc.

Headquarters: Cheyenne, Wyo.

Title: director of technology

Date of birth: Jan. 2, 1959

Hometown: Casper, Wyo.

Education: B.S. in accounting, University of Wyoming

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