Category: Business Intelligence

Business intelligence (BI) is an incredibly powerful and useful tool for restaurant owners, even more so if you manage multiple sites at once. Integrating a BI solution with a good EPOS system is essential for those wishing to succeed. The insights garnered from a single software platform hosted in a centralised database can assist restaurant owners and managers in better understanding their business, their employees, and their customers. Knowing exactly what is going on at any one time, from any location in the world, can help you make informed decisions and ensure you’re always maximising efficiency and boosting productivity and sales.

Here are just a few insights that BI can give you about your business:

Sales data

From the most lucrative time of day, week, month or year, to your most sold meal – sales data can give valuable insights into which of your marketing efforts are succeeding, what your customers most desire and means you can ensure popular items are readily available across locations. If you know peak selling times and your demand for a product, you can enhance your operations, keeping customers happy and improving customer service.

Employee productivity

Knowing which employees are more productive than others allows you to identify your best team members so you can optimise teams and ensure you have the most productive employees working together at the most profitable selling times. Having an idea about how your employees work together makes employee scheduling easier and knowing how many people to have on at any one time reduces unnecessary labour costs.

Stock control

Keeping an eye on your inventory lets you know when you need to reorder items, what’s been popular, what hasn’t, and could indicate if employees are helping themselves to a free lunch.

Integrated with tablet ordering and Kitchen Display Systems, stock control modules also allow you to alert staff immediately of any out of stock items, reducing the number of unhappy customers and awkward apologies after orders have been placed.

Spot trends and possible fraudulent activity

BI is tremendous at showing you certain trends and patterns in your restaurant data. For example, it can alert you to discrepancies in stock or unusual transactions (such as a large number of voids) that may highlight fraudulent activity or indicate that further staff training is needed. This allows you to rectify any issues right away so you can always be at your most profitable. Tracking employee IDs for certain transactions and using CCTV drilldown means no one is falsely accused and you can rectify any issues before they have a large impact on your organisation.

Business intelligence gives a detailed and in-depth view of your whole business, across stores, locations and brands. It’s important you know how your business is performing so you can make better decisions about where you should pay most of your attention to. Tracking business activity means you can always be aware of any issues and resolve them immediately and it also means you can view and celebrate your ongoing success!

If you’d like to know more about how business intelligence can help your business, get in touch on hospitality@pxtech.com.

With mobile ordering and apps such as Deliveroo, JustEat etc. restaurants are no longer only having to deal with the customers that wish to dine in the restaurant. Predicting how many members of staff you need on a given night can be impossible and staff scheduling can become a challenge. With labour costs being one of your largest expenses, it’s crucial that you stay on top of what you’re spending on employee wages. Successful restaurants are likely to have a good back-office system to help them analyse labour costs in order to ensure they are fully optimising their workforce.

Here’s three ways you can use technology to reduce and maximise on labour costs.

Verify attendance and punctuality

It’s not unheard of for employees to get their friends to clock in for them when they’re running a little late or are unable to make a shift. Before the emergence of Business Intelligence, business owners had to manually add up employee timecards meaning discrepancies often went unnoticed. Having a digital system in place, CCTV drilldown and automatic alerts when something unusual is happening will allow you to be more vigilant, saving on fraudulent or unnecessary labour costs.

Utilise predictive scheduling

A good Business Intelligence system can analyse previous sales data and tell you what your busiest and most profitable times are. It can also show which nights with which teams are most productive. This means you can plan future staff scheduling to ensure you always have the best team working at the best time. Having staff work within a team on a night that will increase their productivity means you can optimise labour costs by ensuring you get the most out of your employees on a given night. It will also mean that you are never under or overstaffed, providing your customers with the best and smoothest dining experience possible. 

Prevent unnecessary overtime

You can’t possibly keep an eye on all your restaurants and all your staff at any one time. Having real-time data available 24/7 allows you to keep track of unexpected busy periods or periods that may require employees to work over their scheduled hours.  If necessary, your Business Intelligence system can be programmed to send you an alert whenever a member of staff hasn’t signed out on time, leaving you to check why and be on top of what is happening in your restaurant. Preventing any unnecessary over-scheduled work will help keep your labour costs to a minimum.

Staff scheduling can be one of the hardest tasks you face as a restaurant owner. Luckily, there are now systems and technologies that can help. Making sure you are optimising labour costs will surely create a smoother working environment, better customer service and higher profits as a result.

To learn more about how technology can help minimise your labour costs, contact us on info@pxtech.com or 01332 921 300.

One of the most important aspects of a hospitality business is it’s customer service. There’s no doubt that providing good customer service is integral to success within the sector, particularly when good reviews and referrals are so important for generating new custom.  BI helps with numerous aspects of a business, from simplifying big data to reducing fraud and can also be very useful for improving customer service.

Here’s how BI can help:

Spot trends

Being able to identify certain patterns in customer behaviour means you can know which products sell at what times during which seasons. Making sure you have the desired products available when the customer desires them (and is most likely to purchase them) is important for encouraging repeat custom, good reviews and increasing saleability.

Track stock levels

Ensuring you have the correct products in stock when the customer requires them is equally important. This prevents complaints from customers that your restaurant was out of stock of their desired products. This is most prevalent in seasonal drinks promotions such as making sure you have enough stock to make more cold drinks in the summer.

Staff scheduling

Being understaffed puts strain on your staff, leading to mistakes, slow service and unsatisfied customers. BI can tell you who your most productive employees are and what your optimum sale time is. Having the right staff and the right amount of staff working at the right times can really contribute to providing customers with the best service possible.

Prominent customer voice

Three quarters of adults in the US choose a restaurant based on online search results. Reviews are more important than ever and customers expect to be listened to. Having software that can collect feedback data makes it much quicker for the customers’ voice to get to the owner of an organisation. This makes it much easier for the owner to take feedback on board and make reactive decisions about any changes the business should make.

Deeper analysis = deeper customer satisfaction

Fundamentally, understanding your customer will allow you to provide them with the best customer service possible. Knowing what your customer wants and when they want it means you can make more informed decisions about your business and what it offers. Providing good products that customers truly require will encourage repeat custom and receive better reviews and referrals.

Combining these components and using Business Intelligence to make the right decisions about your organisation will ensure that your customer service is second to none. Data analytics can be very useful to improve many aspects of a business. If you’d like to know how else Business Intelligence can improve your business, get in touch at info@pxtech.com or 01332 921 300.

The hospitality industry has often been recognised as one of the most fast-paced and stressful environments to work in. Trying to lead within this industry often requires long and irregular hours with few days off in-between. Juggling an enterprise of restaurants can be extremely difficult, but keeping track of staff, stock and sales is not without its rewards. It has been largely accepted that business data analysis is fundamental to the success of any organisation.

With time a premium, the last thing you need is to have to spend hours trawling through masses of data to keep your business running smoothly. Fortunately, the popularisation of technology within the hospitality sector has helped soothe many of the concerns surrounding collecting and dealing with large amounts of data. Advanced EPOS and Business Intelligence software can ease your work-life stress and complete many of these menial tasks for you.

Here are just three ways your EPOS and BI software can simplify data to improve your hospitality organisation.

Visibility of transactions

Being able to view any transaction at anytime from anywhere can be a huge advantage when you need to know exactly what is going on while you’re not there. Not only does it let you know which employee is selling which product, but also gives you insights into potential fraudulent transactions.

BI can alert you to an unusual amount of price overrides or voids to ensure that all your sales are legitimate. One common report of fraud within the hospitality sector is employees ringing food through and then voiding or refunding the sale and taking the food without paying. Another example includes employees refunding transactions in order to give their friends and family free food, or even voiding a legitimate sale and keeping the cash. BI software helps to highlight these situations, letting you know which member of staff could be committing fraud and making sure your sales data is in order.

Track stock levels

Keeping an eye on your stock levels is not only important for making sure you’re not wasting money but also to guarantee that out-of-stock items are not being sold by employees. Having a full and up to date stock inventory available means that staff can let customers know immediately when something is not available. This provides a smoother selling system and ensures customer satisfaction.

Tracking stock levels also allows you to see any disparities in stock. If something is going missing at the same time each week, for example, then it becomes clear where the stock is going. Perhaps you have ended up with more items of something you previously thought sold quite well, indicating what items on your menu need altering, removing or further marketing.

Monitor employee productivity

Knowing which members of staff are best at what tasks allows you to take full advantage of your team’s skills. Keeping an eye on where they excel means that each employee can be situated within a job role that is most comfortable for them whilst also increasing your restaurant’s productivity.

Most important of all, monitoring employee behaviour alongside sales data allows you to see when your busiest times of the day are so that you can have the right amount of staff working at the right times. This will prevent unnecessary labour costs by ensuring you’re not overstaffed while also having the optimal number of employees working to maximise your busy selling periods and maintain a smooth service.

Business Intelligence and advanced EPOS systems have many other benefits in departments across your organisation including marketing, finance and HR. These are just three main ways business data can be simplified and utilised to suit your needs and optimise the running of your hospitality business.