Our Work

Real engagements with businesses in Oman and the GCC — what they were facing, what we built with them, and where they are now.

The situation

Olio launched without a system in place. Records were kept manually and scattered across Excel sheets — workable at the very beginning, but not for long. Once the restaurant actually started operating, transaction volume and complexity grew quickly, and the manual approach began to break down. That is the point at which they approached us.

How we approached it

We started by reviewing where the business actually stood rather than jumping to a tool. From there we advised on the gaps, agreed a plan of action, and selected the system that fit the stage the business was at — not the stage someone might imagine it reaching in five years. We then implemented it and trained the team to use it.

The part most people skip: the workflow, not just the software

Installing a system is the easy half. What made the difference at Olio was establishing the operating process around it — starting with procurement, built to best practice but deliberately sized for a small business:

• Chefs raise purchase orders directly in the system. Vendors receive a proper, official order document — and the kitchen no longer has to chase someone else to place what it needs.
• No multi-level approval chain. In a business this size, stacking approvers is not control — it is a bottleneck, and orders arrive late because of it.
• No separate purchase requisition before the PO. A large company needs that step. A restaurant needs a short cycle that keeps things moving.
• Clear ownership on receipt. We trained the restaurant supervisor on exactly what happens when an order arrives.
• A clean handover to finance. Supplier invoices are validated, signed off, and passed to the accountant, who books them for payment and handles reconciliation.

We kept the books while it bedded in

A new system and a new process need time to become habit. For roughly a year we handled the bookkeeping ourselves while the workflow settled and the team grew comfortable with it — so the business had proper records from day one rather than a system nobody was quite using yet.

Then we handed it over

Once the operation was stable, the right next step was for Olio to bring finance in-house. We supported the move end to end — headhunting, interviewing, and hiring — and they successfully appointed their own accountant.

Where they are now

Olio runs on established finance and procurement workflows with the system embedded in daily operations, staffed by their own in-house accountant. VAT and income tax filings are submitted on time and in compliance.