In the competitive environment of quick-service restaurants, rapidly and reliably delivering personalized customer information through the supply chain upon demand is a necessity.

The Dunkin' Donuts Northeast Distribution Center is the central point in a supply chain to over 1,600 Dunkin' Donuts New England franchisees. "Our aggressive growth plans demanded a new approach to serving our franchisees," said Bryan Hartnett, General Manager of the Northeast Distribution Center. "We knew that we had to deliver more than great products. Our franchisees need timely access to our central business systems, our expertise and the latest information about our products."

Constrained by budget and time, Dunkin' Donuts looked to a trusted advisor, Oscar Herrera, founder of KnowledgeSource, for a recommended solution. "I surveyed available content management and portal solutions from vendors that had the financial stability, enterprise experience and technical capability to deliver a complete solution." said Herrera. "For Dunkin, we decided to use the Red Hat Enterprise Portal Server because it met all of these criteria."

KnowledgeSource delivered not only a comprehensive content management platform that enables Dunkin' Donuts to independently manage their Portal, but also the front-end design and back-end architecture for the distribution system. KnowledgeSource also led the franchisee store training initiative and the customer service integration of the portal.

Dunkin' Donuts expects its new franchisee portal to deliver significant value to franchisees and reduce the cost of delivering that value. The portal provides important operational, marketing and training information to franchisees. Through the same web-based portal, franchisees can place orders for products, inquire on the status of orders and view order history. All of the order management information comes from an existing back-office system.

What's next: KnowledgeSource is working with Dunkin' Donuts distribution on integrating a new, state-of-the-art warehouse management system. Stay tuned.