Pret A Manger selects NetSuite OneWorld cloud suite to support international growth

'As we continue to grow we need a system that can scale with us,' says Pret A Manger director of IT Andy Chalkin

Pret A Manager has selected NetSuite's OneWorld cloud software suite to manage business operations and support financial management across the globe.

The international food and coffee brand has 390 stores across the UK, US, France, Hong Kong and China and serves more than 450,000 customers a day - and it's still growing.

As a result of this growth, Pret A Manger decided it needed to deploy a new financial management system that could support its needs as the business looks to expand in both current and additional markets, eventually settling on NetSuite's OneWorld suite.

Pret A Manager's deployment of NetSuite OneWorld comes as UK retail chain WHSmith launched a new cloud-based B2B online commerce system on NetSuite SuiteCommerce.

The deployment will see Pret A Manager replace its existing ERP system with OneWorld to manage mission-critical business processes across all its markets.

Those include procure-to-pay, credit-to-cash, global financial consolidation, multi-currency management for five different currencies and multi-language capabilities for English, French and Cantonese.

NetSuite OneWorld was selected for these tasks because it can provide "the flexibility, agility and scalability Pret A Manger needs for continued growth and to gain a real-time view of business performance, including control over suppliers and spend," said Andy Chalklin, group director of IT at Pret A Manger.

"As we continue to grow both in the UK and internationally, we need a system that can scale with us while ensuring that we have the currency, language and tax compliance features we need," he continued.

"NetSuite will give us what we need, without the investment in IT that an on-premise system would require," he added.

NetSuite OneWorld isn't the only cloud tool that Pret A Manger has deployed; the firm has also rolled out ServiceNow's cloud-based service management platform in an effort to improve customer service.

"The shops now have a very simple way of recording issues, ordering items and requesting services," Chalklin said of that deployment.