James O'Sullivan
A decade ago we lived in a very different world: property value was always going to go up, England had a promising football team and collecting, managing and organising all the data in your hospitality business was difficult, laborious and costly. Thankfully times have changed, though not for the better on the property and football fronts.
The first major change was in the amount of data you were able to gather and the range of sources it came from. EPoS systems went from being glorified calculators to offering real value. They now present a wide array of functions ranging from centralised pricing, through recipe control with automatic stock replenishment, to visual layouts of your venue with bookings and pre-purchased items assigned. When you add an electronic loyalty system with digital vouchers you’re really able to build up a wealth of information on your company as a whole in the widest view, right down to what a certain customer did on a cloudy Wednesday in Norwich.
Next came more interactive and latterly mobile websites, social media and mobile apps which again allowed you to interact with your customers in a more personal and direct manner. Surveys and polls became commonplace and selling tickets to your events was only a few clicks away. In many ways this was a whole new beginning for the industry from a service perspective.
As a result of all this though, there was the mountain of data you were generating in the back office. The ever increasing reams of paper needed to remain compliant with HR and Health & Safety. There was a stack of delivery notes and invoices from suppliers and the daily reports you were getting from your venue managers added up to rather a lot to contend with.
All of this was great to have but the fragmented nature and mix of systems meant that true insights were hard to come by. What was needed was a way of seeing and measuring your return on investment (ROI).
Imagine your managers creating rotas within your budget guidelines, every time. Their team are notified automatically. Your waiters clock in on your EPoS system, and their hours are approved by your managers as a part of their closing tasks. You then approve all hours submitted at the end of the week before permitting your finance team to export the data for payroll.
Imagine you send a customer a newsletter email, and you can see which links got the most clicks, which calls to action were preferred, how many party bookings you received as a consequence and which vouchers you issued to entice them along. Your EPoS system now recognises that customer from their voucher, so you can log all their orders, find out more about what they like and gather their feedback with a survey system. What a journey!
Enter Kobas – your complete hospitality management solution. Kobas allows you to manage your staff, control your assets and delight your customers, all at an astonishingly low price point. It’s perfect for multiple operators of all sizes.
It’s a shame we can’t also offer you a solution to housing market or football supporter woes, but we’re not miracle workers, just passionate about hospitality.
