Customer Case

Chainformation helps ICEBAR by ICEHOTEL to set the course for expansion

As a fast growing franchise acting in several geographies, ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL was spending way too much time sending out e-mails and keeping franchisees updated by phone while tangled up in a franchise manual that nobody would read.

About ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL Business

Event and experience based bar concept Active markets 6
ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL is part of ICEHOTEL, the worlds rst ice hotel. Located in the village of Jukkasjrvi, Sweden about 17 km from Kiruna, and existing each year between December and April, the ICEHOTEL is entirely made out of snow and ice blocks taken from the Torne River. The rst ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL opened in partnership with ABSOLUT VODKA in the original Icehotel in 1994. The entire bar is made of ice. Bar guests are served vodka in glasses made of ice often described as a drink in the rocks. Operating as a franchise concept since 2002, ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL can now be found at ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjarvi and in ve major cities: Copenhagen, Istanbul, , London, Oslo and Stockholm. Together, these ICEBARS serve more than 600,000 customers each year.

Business Challenge
Most leaders in the franchise industry will agree that expansion and growth is a strategic imperative. But they will also agree that expanding while maintaining brand consistency and communicating eectively with franchise locations is enormously dicult. ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL understands this challenge better than most, operating in a highly competitive market space in multiple geographies. Recently, ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL launched an aggressive growth plan designed to facilitate the roll-out of additional bars in a number of cities around the world. The company is eyeing strategic locations in markets such as France, Spain, Germany and the United States to complement the current six locations in the world. The ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL brand is built on a tightly controlled brand-story and each year, the bar is rebuilt from the ground up from new ice that has shipped in from Sweden. In fact, every year over 40 tons of ice is shipped to each location from Northern Sweden. Shortly after, ice sculpture experts travel to each location to sculpt the bar and ice art aligned with the brands global seasonal theme. More than just an ordinary bar, operating an ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL

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requires that sta aquire specic knowledge in handling a bar fully made of ice. For example, unlike other bars that can call on handy men to perform basic repairs, the local sta will need to know how to repair ice that is broken or exposed to heat.

The time was right to build on the success of our legacy, but restoring our core message and doing so in a more structured manner.
Dan Hollstrm, Development Director

Also, the sta members at each location are tasked with story-telling, i.e.sharing the mythical brand story of ICEHOTEL andICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL with every customer. This places great emphasis on brand training and support. The rst years of expansion were handled by a limited task force and boot-strapped business structure where day-to-day communication with franchisees took place over the phone and e-mail. As ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL grew and signed new franchise agreements, it became clear that communicating with multiple locations through phone and e-mail was both time consuming and ineective. It was also challenging to keep locations aligned with the brand concept and maintain consistency. For instance, the storytelling, i.e. telling the ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL story to customers, a core component of the overall brand experience, began to dier from location to location. Without a good communication platform, the message had started to dilute and locations were becoming increasingly disparate. ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL became acutely aware of the need for a better way to manage day-to-day communications, provide franchise manuals, ensure brand compliance, and roll out promotions simultaneously at multiple locations in a timely manner. According to Dan Hollstrm, Development Director at ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL, Having operated as a small but fast growing business for a number of years, we had always relied on our entrepreneurial spirit and hands-on approach to get things done. However, as we grew, we were not equipped to eectively communicate with our franchisees on a day-to-day basis, or conveying our brand story in a consistent, disciplined manner. The time was right to build on the success of our legacy, but restoring our core message and doing so in a more structured manner. The move to consider a new route for communication with franchisees also provided ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL with the opportunity to revamp the way franchise manuals were handled. The content for its franchise manuals had traditionally been managed manually in printed form. Every time there was a change to the manual, ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL would send out a printed sheet to each franchise location a time consuming process that limited the teams ability to work eectively, and focus on creating a dynamic franchise concept. By bringing all day-to-day communications and franchise manuals into one digital platform, ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL would be better equipped to manage the franchise concept in real time. Equally important, a digital franchise manual would provide a foundation on which ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL could build future expansion plans for new franchisees with limited ramp up time. Says Dan Hollstrm: Our existing franchise manuals were printed on paper and inserted into binders that were handed out to each franchise. To keep them updated, sending out new sheets of updates, and keeping track of who had received what, was extremely cumbersome and time consuming. Often times, the franchise manual ended up sitting in the back of a cabinet, soon to be forgotten and unread. In 2012, as part of its increased focus on brand consistency, ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL launched a brand

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identity strategy and new Marketing Communications guidelines. With an increased focus on centralized marketing, the need for a communication platform where information could be stored, shared and maintained was larger than ever before. For help in realizing an Intranet-based communication platform and revitalizing its franchise manuals, ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL wanted to team with a partner that would bring not only expertise in technical environments and system integration, but also bringing a deep understanding of the franchise world.

Often times, the franchise manual ended up sitting in the back of a cabinet, soon to be forgotten and unread.
Dan Hollstrm, Development Director

Chainformation was the logical choice. Over the past twelve years, Chainformation had built and perfected a one-stop system that delivered know-how, enabled dialogue and speed of communication between head oce and franchise locations built specically for the industry and its requirements In partnering with Chainformation, ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL would leverage a solution built specically for their industry and based on proven technologies and processes that would help maximize the output of its locations - on time and on budget.

How Chainformation helped

By implementing CCM in all of its locations, the entire ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL network now had access to a high powered Intranet that would function as the delivery vehicle for know-how, business data and content. But so much more than an Intranet, CCM partnered with ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL to provide a platform that enabled faster, role-based communication ow, encouraged collaboration, and simplied the use of its franchise manual all while helping pave the way for ICEBAR BY ICEHOTELs expansion plan with new locations. While CCM is ready to be used out of the box and can be up and running in 2-4 weeks, ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL had several additional customization requests to t with its business model. Over the course of four months, Chainformation focused on customizing a scalable, responsive, best-of-breed architecture that would enable ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL to not only establish a full-edged communication platform, but also manage content more eciently and eectively, and perform Sales Reporting through a robust and dynamic environment. Importantly, Chainformation was committed to designing, testing and implementing CCM with minimal disruptions to ICEBAR BY ICEHOTELs existing daily business. Chainformation deployed a team of professionals who were involved in all aspects of project delivery, beginning with analysing ICEBAR BY ICEHOTELs key processes, and business drivers. Through a series of requirements-gathering workshops and functional design sessions, Chainformation were able to frame a customer unique solution that supported ICEBAR by ICEHOTEL in each of its focus areas, including guest management, brand management and sta education. Once the functional design was in place, the team worked quickly to complete the CCM-platform customized for ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL, including technical design, development and testing and system integration. The primary solution components included: Roll-out of CCM as the ICEBAR BY ICEHOTELs single point of entry and communication platform: A customized solution that meets all system-, knowledge delivery- and communication-needs for the

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ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL network. This ensures ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL network is always informed, while maximizing brand compliance, work process compliance and promotional awareness A user-interface that enabled head oce to reach out with role based information Real-time access for employees of day-to-day business support such as Digital franchise manuals, Brand Guidelines, and Identity Standards. A media asset manager that stores all brand-compliant visual elements such as images, logos and templates. The media asset manager also enables the design of local promotions. Smart functionalities to reduce dierent administrative tasks and oer a distinct experience. Such functionalities include a global sales reporting module and vastly improved Franchise Manuals.

High Performance Delivered

As ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL matures as a franchise and expands into new geographies, its head oce will increasingly depend on a digital communication platform that can enable Fast communication and delivery of know-how to franchise locations Digital Franchise Manuals and Marketing Guidelines that can easily be updated, distributed and read Sharing of global promotions and marketing programs Full Integration with existing ERP systems With Chainformations help, ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL has signicantly enhanced how it handles communication in day-to-day operations of a franchise network. Every ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL location now has one single point of entry from which it can access the franchise manuals, a media asset management module, sales reporting module, while also receiving important updates and news from the ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL universe. Because CCM is role-based, highly localized content can be made available to one specic location, for instance hiring procedures. Rather than wading through enormous amounts of content, the employees will see exactly what is relevant for them, freeing up time and keeping the focused. As Franchise manuals are updated in real-time, CCM enables ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL to see if one location or sta member has missed to take part of an important training document. The system even keeps track if anything has been printed out. With CCM by Chainformation, we now have a truly crosscollaborative environment for the ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL network. Rather than over-informing our franchise locations with bombardments of e-mails and phone calls, we can customize the communication ow and share relevant content on a need-to-know basis in seconds, explains Dan Hollstrm. According to Anders Hall, Sales and Marketing Manager at Chainformation, Chainformation helped to combine franchise knowledge and their experience in franchise customized systems to create a solid technical foundation and marketleading experience for the ICEBAR BY ICEHOTEL network.

We help equip your franchise network with timely, relevant and critical know-how.

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