Kona Grill Serves Up Savings

“The real cost savings for Kona Grill will come when we don’t have to duplicate the data center.”

Glen Holroyd

Director of IT • Kona Grill

Pacing the Expansion

The IT team at Kona Grill, led by Glen Holroyd, Director of IT, found itself in a transition from moving from a traditional data center model with many employees using VPN to transfer files, to migrating to a cloud-based environment. “Our VPN was becoming very difficult to manage and we were balancing the fact that we had file storage at the data center, and we definitely didn’t want to continue to maintain a data center at Kona Grill. The overall hosting of applications and managing a data center was becoming outdated and we needed to sort out the best way forward to embrace the cloud, while still having a versatile and secure file storage solution,” explains Holroyd.

Restaurant general managers were spending a lot of time scanning and downloading reports, and then individually emailing these files to the home office. These files contained sensitive data and managers struggled to find the most secure way to send reports. With employees using FTP services, and other workarounds for file transfer and storage such as thumb drives and Dropbox, these temporary solutions were not only adding additional cost, but as the company has grown, a standardized file solution needed to be identified. As Kona Grill prioritizes international expansion, the training, design and development teams had an especially pressing need for a more efficient file sharing solution. Employees were also losing data and information if their hard drives failed and could not be restored, and information needed to be organized to better collaborate across all locations.

“Essentially, we needed to look at how we did business. To open new restaurant locations, we access training materials, and large files such as architectural and CAD drawings. Restaurant general managers work with our POS systems and upload daily reports to the home office. We needed these development, design and training files to have an intuitive filing system, with fast access to large files, as well as determine an efficient way for our general managers to spend less time on reports and more time ensuring our guests were happy,” adds Holroyd.

Kona Grill plans to grow its restaurant concept to up to 200 stores, with the anticipation of branching out to secondary concepts in the future. In 2014, the company had 23 locations and now has increased to 45. In this particular juncture, Kona Grill will continue to add to its real estate portfolio and expand locations, but it will also undertake some restaurant remodeling this year and ensure business processes are as efficient as possible before ramping up new restaurant openings.

Solution

Kona Grill tried some temporary fixes with Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, but these solutions were not robust enough and didn’t have the features the company required. To begin to exit the data center world, the IT team began consulting with colleagues about possible market solutions that would allow for a smooth transition. Outside of Egnyte, Kona Grill looked at options from Box, Dropbox and Citrix ShareFile, but Egnyte won out for being the most versatile and secure solution focused on the needs of an enterprise. Kona Grill found itself at a crossroads where employees were trying to solve the inadequacies of the current solution, and so selling a new solution across the company came at an opportune and advantageous time.

The company piloted Egnyte Connect first with its development and IT teams for a couple months to test the solution and to see how best to rollout Egnyte across the rest of the company. Kona Grill uses Storage Sync to enable a hybrid environment, and many employees have set up Desktop Sync to work on local files while still syncing to a shared drive in the background and enabling employees to collaborate on the latest versions of files. The Egnyte Web Edit feature is also used by many employees to edit files on desktops in native applications, without having to save a revised version back to the cloud. Kona Grill has also integrated applications such as Egnyte for Office365 and Egnyte mobile apps, accessing files from on premises or in the cloud.

Solution

Collaboration and Sharing

Employees at the home office and in the field can upload files to Egnyte quickly to share with both internal and external groups. Instead of now sending files via email or FTP, a link can be sent to access a particular Egnyte folder. Many teams are collaborating with outside consultants and agencies as new properties are acquired and developed and Egnyte has streamlined processes for launching new restaurants, rolling out new menu concepts, or analyzing financial reports.

Greater Efficiency and Speed

Employees at the home office and in the field can upload files to Egnyte quickly to share with both internal and external groups. Instead of now sending files via email or FTP, a link can be sent to access a particular Egnyte folder. Many teams are collaborating with outside consultants and agencies as new properties are acquired and developed and Egnyte has streamlined processes for launching new restaurants, rolling out new menu concepts, or analyzing financial reports.

Data Security

Many reports and documents shared within the company at Kona Grill contain sensitive financial or proprietary information. Having a secure way to not only share and collaborate with external groups, but also a way to securely send daily reports gives great peace of mind. Sharing data with an Egnyte link that will expire after a set time also ensures greater monitoring and control.

“The real cost savings for Kona Grill will come when we don’t have to duplicate the data center. Egnyte allows our company to loosen the reigns to the data center world, and eliminate the need to buy hardware in the future. As you add in the tremendous time savings Egnyte has created through efficient file storage processes, this solution is an instrumental part of our enterprise operations.”

Glen Holroyd

Director of IT

The Rewards

Kona Grill has realized numerous benefits since deploying Egnyte. The entire company has benefitted from tremendous efficiency, with the average user gaining approximately 30 percent time savings due to the Egnyte solution. With the VPN challenges in the past, the IT team has far fewer headaches and support calls. Employees are now able to share an Egnyte to share files, with the option for the link to expire. Users can use any device, including iPads to access a variety of files, such as videos, training materials and menus. Financial information is more secure, and reports like SOC audits can be accessed through a link to a particular folder. Instead of sending a file with a password for gift card numbers, this information lives in a secure Egnyte file and can be shared with outside distributors securely and easily. The company invested in the Egnyte Professional Services team to launch Storage Sync and to show employees the ropes as Kona Grill moved from a SAN environment to the cloud and eventually turning off its SAN completely. Training sessions were set up company–wide, including direct training with Egnyte or through webinars.

Collaboration and file sharing have been made much simpler, especially for teams such as development who often share files with outside contractors and consultants. Files are no longer lost due to Egnyte’s snapshot and versioning technology. While employees in the past sometimes lost hours of work, the Egnyte solution enables staff to easily retrieve accidentally deleted files or to locate misplaced files seamlessly and quickly. The culinary teams can now upload menus and training instructions to use on site at new locations or to introduce new menu items.

While restaurant general managers had to upload payroll, sales reports, and inventory counts, now these reports are easily saved in shared folders and accessed by the home office more readily. Managers are saving hours in the office and are able to enhance guest experiences and spend more time in the front of house. Each restaurant has an individual Egnyte user account and is setting the standard for operations and administration to mirror for all future restaurant openings.

Some restaurant locations still struggle with bandwidth constraints and the IT team has been able to activate Egnyte Web Edit for faster editing and saving of files. In the future, Kona Grill anticipates leveraging more Egnyte features to roll out additional programs, such as video training. The Egnyte solution will be essential as international restaurant locations open and as Kona Grill develops new use cases for the Egnyte solution across the entire company.