Few other industries are as competitive as hospitality is – the market changes fast and due to the numerous choices available, customers’ expectations are higher than ever. Diners demand fast service, convenience and impeccable experiences that feel personal. This may prove harder than it sounds (and it already does) due to several things. Keep on reading to find out what issues may arise from not having a fully functional POS system.
As we already mentioned, customers expect service that is above and beyond – and that often includes meal customization. A recent study by Deloitte[1] showed that 85 percent of people think that being able to customize their order is the most important part of the restaurant’s menu. Therefore, it’s important to consider a POS system that allows you to add and exclude ingredients from any dish, as well as one that sends information straight to the kitchen to avoid miscommunication. Furthermore, your POS system should give your staff the opportunity to view and activate meal deals and offers which the customer might be interested in based on their preferences and past purchases.
Each Point of Sale has many users – from waitstaff and kitchen staff to cashiers and managers. And even those may be further segmented. For example, the waitstaff may be separated into different groups for each area of the restaurant. At the same time, managers should be able to access all the sales and operations data, so they can plan the staff roster or make general business decisions. When none of this is an option, each group’s performance decreases. Managers don’t have the available data to make informed decisions and waitstaff must go through irrelevant steps to do their job properly; all this in an industry that requires quick judgment and fast reactions.
In the hectic atmosphere of a restaurant, it’s easy to forget or pass the wrong information to your co-worker. The kitchen staff could misread what the waitstaff jotted down on a piece of paper. The waitstaff may delay the order because of other clients they attended to. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way for the kitchen to receive the correct information right away? Well, this isn’t outlandish at all: the right POS system would seamlessly connect the front of the restaurant with the kitchen, reducing such mistakes to a minimum and allowing your staff to deliver impeccable service from the meal to the attitude.
Most restaurants already possess some kind of business management software, but it often isn’t tailored to their needs. If it’s hard to find the pizza toppings and you’re running a pizzeria, something isn’t right! This could slow down your staff and unnecessarily complicate the restaurant’s processes, thus leading to lower customer satisfaction and disgruntled employees. The right POS system would support, rather than complicate your processes through an intuitive, customized interface that is just right for your restaurant. It would let your employees take full advantage of your system’s capabilities.
Many restaurants work with frustrating Point of Sale systems that can’t handle all the ways a customer may want to pay. A good POS system will be both secure and flexible when it comes to payment. It will make splitting the bill easy, rather than customers having to figure out who has to pay what. Restaurants should be able to accommodate for multiple payment options – credit and debit cards, gift cards and promotional codes, cash and checks – and the right POS system allows them to do that. On top of that, if you’re a restaurant that attracts many foreign visitors, your software should support multi-currency transactions.
Selecting the right software solution may seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. Explore your options at Intelligent Systems.
This article has been republished from the Intelligent Systems blog with their permission. Want to know more about the solutions? Visit their website to learn more!
[1]Deloitte, The restaurant of the future: Creating the next-generation customer experience.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit
Originally published Jul 7, 2019 5:13:25 PM, updated July 16, 2019
read
The Enterprise Digital Canvas is a comprehensive and structured blueprint of your Digital Enterprise. This article summarises learnings from effective Digital Workspace design for COVID-19 response, using the Digital Canvas model.
See how it works here:
Architecture Is The Foundation Digital Workspace
A successful workspace for recovery and growth requires you to have a 360-view of your operating capabilities. This is only possible by effectively leveraging The Digital Canvas (World’s leading framework for Digital Design).
For more information, visit our Partner Arqitek.
read
Cloud computing is an exponentially growing market. According to a study by Forbes, the public cloud computing market, including cloud applications (SaaS), development and data platforms (PaaS), and infrastructure (IaaS) services combined is expected to grow to $299.4 billion.
With new businesses rapidly adopting cloud-based apps, these solutions have become mainstream in the industry as well as personal life. From our daily emails to phone storage, practically everything is stored and managed by cloud computing apps.
However, the uses of cloud computing are not just limited to personal emails or storage. With cloud computing services firms can avoid the upfront cost and complexity of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, and instead simply pay for what they use, when they use it.
In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer's hard drive.
According to Microsoft,
“....cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping you lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently, and scale as your business needs change...”
Let's see the top five ways business are using cloud computing in their day to day operations.
The cloud allows users to enjoy network-based access to communication tools like emails and calendars. Most of the messaging and calling apps like Skype and WhatsApp are also based on cloud infrastructure. All your messages and information are stored on the service provider’s hardware rather than on your personal device. This allows you access your information from anywhere via the internet.
VEGA Messenger and iDenedi are our very own communication app that allow remote teams to work and collaborate from anywhere in the world - in a very safe and secure way.
The modern computing power and capacity of the cloud lets businesses to store information about user behaviour. This can be used to develop customised solutions, messages and products based on the preferences of customers.
Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant - all are cloud-based natural-language intelligent bots. These chatbots leverage the computing capabilities of the cloud to provide personalised context-relevant customer experiences.
Read More: How AI is Helping Businesses improve Customer Experience
When organisations choose cloud for data storage the responsibility of their data also lies with the service provider. This saves business the cost of infrastructure and maintenance. The cloud service provider is responsible for securing data and meeting legal and compliance requirements.
The cloud also provides more flexibility in the sense that you can enjoy large storage and on-demand backups.
Recovery is also performed faster in the cloud because the data is stored over a network of physical servers rather than at one on-site data centre. Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon S3 are popular examples of cloud backup solutions.
Read More: Check Out Our Managed Cyber Security Platform - ASPIDA
Whether a business develops application for web or mobile or even games, cloud computing services prove to be a reliable solution. Using the cloud, you can easily create scalable cross-platform experiences for your users.
Many of these services include many pre-coded tools and libraries — like directory services, search and security. Some will also offer full end to end service from strategy, consultancy, UX/UI, Development, QA and support. This can speed up and simplify the development process.
Learn More About Our Partner Knowarth and how they help enterprises build apps.
Many business management applications like customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) are also based on a cloud service provider. Software as a Service (SAAS) has become a popular method for deploying enterprise-level software.
It ensures hassle-free management, maintenance and security of your organisation’s critical business resources and allows you to access these applications conveniently via a web browser.
Here is a use case of our partner, iSystems
As a busy distributor, iSystem's client, Oxford University Press needed a sophisticated solution to optimise its distribution and customer service operations.
Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations is a cloud-based business application platform that combines components of customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), along with productivity applications and artificial intelligence tools.
iSystems supported Oxford University Press with a full integration between all the departments improved service by making current data available to all and streamlined order processing, saving OUP time and money.
Learn More About iSystems
Cloud computing services are still at a relatively early stage of adoption, despite their success stories. Many companies are still contemplating which apps to adopt and when.
However, their usage is only likely to go up as enterprises get more comfortable with the idea of their data being somewhere other than an expensive server in the basement.
read
The growth and ultimate success of any company is determined by the consistency of results. These results can only be achieved if the team consistently meets the desired goals and targets. KPIs are the means of setting and measuring the success of these goals. In this post we will briefly take a look at what exactly KPIs are and why an organisation needs them.
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are measurable values that show the effectiveness of a company’s business objectives. A company will set High-Level KPIs that measure the overall performance of the business towards achieving its strategy. Low-Level KPIs measure the performance of departments, units and individuals.
Although the terms “KPI” and “goal” are often used interchangeably, they are not really the same. A company’s goals define the outcomes that it desires to achieve, in a form of measurable results. KPIs, on the other hand, are indicators on the performance that tell whether the company is on track to achieve those goals.
Without knowing what the goals of the organisation are, there is no way to gauge a team or individual performance. Therefore, no ability to guide the team to improve or optimise. With clearly defined KPIs it is easier to give accountability to the specific team members and achieve transparency. Teams can collaborate better when they know exactly where to focus their energy.
Numbers do not lie! It is easy to answer the status update related questions when KPIS are clear as day. Performance analysis and making personal decisions is all easier. Work is not measured by irrelevant benchmarks such as hours at work or number of emails sent per day. KPIs let team members take responsibility of their time on the job and making sure that they align efforts with goals.
This is logical. When you implement KPIs, you will automatically need to develop systems/processes to measure them. With this information, the business intelligence gained will allow management to make more informed decisions.
Though they may be easily confused, KPI’s are not exactly an organisation's goals themselves, but they’re a measurement of them.
A KPI can indicate that your sales team is only generating 30% of the targeted number of leads that you have set as a goal. As a manager in this situation, you are instantly aware of your sales team’s progress and the reason for not hitting the desired numbers of leads.
When you’re able to measure your goals this way, it gives you the opportunity to see where the gaps in your efforts might be and subsequently make decisions that help you reach your goals faster.
If you measure the same KPIs quarter over quarter, you can begin to detect patterns in your numbers. These patterns can help you optimise your business strategies.
This can allow you to make predictions about the slow or high performing quarters. Or identify over or under performing team members and help them improve their efforts.
One of the main reasons to invest in a KPI software is integration. The data flow from different sources can be a big complication if no integration methods are applied.
Using a KPI software allows all your departments to enter their data manually into one big system, or the program can connect to different data flows automatically. Whichever method is used, you can be sure that the integrated connection will boost your business management.
Now that you know why KPIs are significant for your business, here is a handy guide to help you in defining KPIs for your organisation.
Download this FREE guide and start setting the KPIs that are relevant to your business.
This ebook will provide you with sample KPIs for the most common positions at service companies, with guidelines for setting smart KPIs.
Cloud computing is an exponentially growing market. According to a study by Forbes, the public cloud computing market, including cloud applications (SaaS), development and data platforms (PaaS), and infrastructure (IaaS) services combined is expected to grow to $299.4 billion.
Now more than ever banks and insurance companies have realized the need for a personalized approach towards each and every client. This lets them both distinguish themselves among competitors and create meaningful relationships with their clients; thus, maximizing profit opportunities.
The competitiveness and long manufacturing times make fashion retail a challenging business to be in. At the same time, massive opportunities exist for retailers to take advantage of. But it’s important for them to stay flexible and adapt to the changes in the market. Take a look at how a retail software solution could help them do that.