Applebee's tech chief handles a heaping plate of duties

OVERLAND PARK, KAN. -- Sustaining growth, fostering change and making connections are the themes that unite Steve Lumpkin's diverse portfolio of corporate responsibilities.

As executive vice president and chief development officer for the 1,226-unit Applebee's chain, Lumpkin oversees the building of all new Applebee's restaurants, participates in the evolution of the company's corporate strategy, directs its explorations of the constantly changing landscape of e-business and functions as the untitled chief information officer.

It is a full plate, and while many people might find it too much to digest, it is very much to Lumpkin's taste.

"Why do people come to growth companies?" Lumpkin asked. "I think it is because they are inherently competitive, and they want to win. I like the challenge, the pace, the variety, the growth and the competition."

The current Applebee's chairman and chief executive, Lloyd Hill, recruited Lumpkin to the Applebee's team five years ago. They first met when they worked together at Olsten/Kimberly Quality Care, a multiunit health services provider, where Lumpkin did a five-year stint as chief financial officer and chief information officer.

"I was drawn to Applebee's by the growth potential, the prospects of the industry and the opportunity to work with someone whom I trusted and had confidence in," Lumpkin explained.

Thirteen years as a self-described project mercenary for Price Waterhouse -- a tour of duty that began with the company's 12-month IT consultant training program in New York and included stops on the West Coast, Dallas and Alaska -- was valuable preparation for his current role at Applebee's, Lumpkin said.

"Every situation was unique; it was great training," Lumpkin said. "I have lived through and seen technology change from mainframes to early green screens on the first personal computers to the Apple MacIntosh to Microsoft Windows to the brave new world of the Internet that we are in now."

According to Lumpkin, his biggest current IT challenge involves finding ways to connect to the world outside of the four walls of Applebee's headquarters. The company has developed a portal for its franchisees to facilitate communication, Lumpkin explained, and it has made equity investments in companies like Instill Corp. that are trying to create connections and develop standards for transactions in the foodservice marketplace.

Integration and communication also are at the root of Applebee's most recent large technology initiative. The company recently completed the installation of a dedicated frame relay network connecting all 250 company-owned Applebee's locations, Lumpkin said, and then deployed the enterprise solutions package from Emeiyville, Calif-based Eatec Corp. over the new network.

Lumpkin explained the installment at Applebee's was the largest implementation of Eatec to date, and in the course of the deployment the product was stretched and pushed to a new and better place. All of the effort has paid off, he said, because Eatec is exceeding Applebee's targets for return on investment.

"We have built a four-lane highway for our managers, and the first thing we put on it was Eatec net," Lumpkin said. "We will put other things on it in the future that will help improve communication with our stores. This will be the gateway to the connected world for our managers."

He also noted that other investments in new technologies already are paying dividends in terms of margin or service improvements. Among them are the 4-year-old implementation of Oscar, a proprietary labor management and sales-forecasting system that runs on the Windows NT computer found in every Applebee's unit and a customer satisfaction measurement system called CSI.

"CSI works through our point-of-sale system and allows our servers to present at point-of-purchase and at point-of-service a survey that the customer can take to get $3 off his At Applebee's, Steven Lumpkin has a variety of responsibilities including overseeing restaurant construction, developing the corporate strategy, directing e-business and serving as unofficial chief information officer.

bill," Lumpkin explained.

Like Oscar and CSI, much of the rest of the technology at Applebee's has been developed in house or is proprietary. The point-of-sale system at the company-owned Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar restaurants is Applebee's own highly evolved version of the DOS-based POS system from Hospitality Solutions International Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla., Lumpkin said. The company's polling applications, dubbed BOA for back-office administration, were fully developed in house. They not only collect performance data to feed the payroll and accounts payable systems but also extract information on every guest check for Applebee's extensive data-warehousing effort.

At the corporate office Applebee's has three main platforms, Lumpkin explained. An AS400 from IBM runs a suite of financial applications from Denver-based J.D. Edwards, while the Eatec system and other applications like e-mail run on SQL servers from Microsoft.

A Teradata data warehouse from NCR stores three years' worth of information from every Applebee's guest check.

Applebee's currently is conducting a nationwide search for a chief information officer to join the 75-person team that reports to Lumpkin. He regards the decision as a testimonial to the ever-increasing role technology plays in driving Applebee's business.

Asked what troubles him most about the current seismic shift under way in the landscape of foodservice technology, Lumpkin pointed to the lack of scale among technology providers.

"If you go to the financial services industry or grocery products or packaged goods, there are technology companies that have reached financial critical mass and acceptance in the marketplace," he said. "It seems like the fragmentation of the foodservice industry is translating to the providers of foodservice technology. It seems we have some significantly underfinanced companies that don't have the financial wherewithal to get traction in the marketplace."

In the final analysis, despite all his involvement with high tech, Lumpkin believes his job is really "about relationships, leaming how to effect change through people, being a better communicator and a better collaborator."

Name: Steven K. Lumpkin

Title: Executive vice president, chief development officer, Applebee's International Inc., Overland, Kan.

Date of birth: Oct. 8, 1954

Hometown: St. Louis

Education: B.S./B.A. in accounting/management information systems; University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.

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