As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and nothing spurs innovation in technology more fervently than slumping sales and shrinking margins—two of the primary drivers of restaurant technology innovation, according to The 2017 Smart Decision Guide to Restaurant Management and POS Systems, published earlier this month and now available for complimentary access.
At the forefront of technology innovation are next-generation restaurant management and point-of-sale (POS) systems. These systems have improved by leaps and bounds in terms of functionality.
There are many compelling reasons for migrating from a legacy system that may be lacking in multiple performance areas to a state-of-the-art system designed to meet an operator’s needs both currently and in the future.
According to the research, 79% of restaurant operators believe that advanced technologies are the key to addressing many of their current challenges. Most also believe that these technologies will enable them to catapult their businesses to ever-higher levels of operational performance and guest satisfaction on an ongoing basis.
With the advent of cloud-based hosting, which has fast become the preferred deployment option, the most obvious benefits are faster speed, greater scalability and lower maintenance costs. The benefits also include mobile enablement— for instance, using tablets for order and payment processing. In some restaurant categories, POS mobility can go a long way toward increasing revenue as well as reducing overhead costs.
For most restaurants, the return on investment can be measured in terms of cost reduction, which is largely a function of increased staff productivity and resource utilization. ROI can also be measured in terms of revenue growth, which is largely a function of improved guest satisfaction and, in some cases, faster table turn times—and again, in certain venues, the ability to reach and serve a larger number of guests simultaneously.
Additional selling points include the ability to improve financial performance with advanced inventory and labor management tools and better performance reporting capabilities.
According to the new research (available here):
- 95% of restaurant operators view the ability to improve guest satisfaction and the quality of the guest experience as one of the biggest benefits one can expect to gain with the right restaurant management and POS system.
- 89% of restaurant operators cite the need to drive increased operational efficiency, including increasing staff productivity and reducing inventory waste, as a key success factor.
- 78% of full-service restaurants and 62% of quick-service and fast-casual restaurants achieved “significant” or “dramatic” improvement in both operations and revenue performance after deploying a next-generation restaurant management and POS system.
- Nearly one-quarter (24%) of restaurant operators who have not upgraded their core restaurant management and POS system within the past three years plan to do so in the next 12 months.
In the past, restaurant operators could have scarcely imagined a world in which mobile ordering and payment processing would become reality, let alone predict the technology advances taking place within the realms of guest relationship management and loyalty program management. Equally important are the robust data analysis and performance reporting capabilities that have become instrumental in helping restaurants better manage their operations and identify opportunities for improvement.
Given the environment in which today’s restaurant businesses compete, having all the right technology solutions has become a strategic imperative. And, being able to access all of the different platform capabilities from a single, unified interface, speaks to the future of technology-enabled restaurant management.
Published by Starfleet Research, the leader in best practices market research for the hospitality sector, with underwriting support from Agilysys, Lavu, Linga POS by Benseron and TouchBistro, the updated and expanded edition of this popular Smart Decision Guide offers a roadmap to success for new and existing restaurants of all sizes and across multiple categories.
This post is sponsored by Starfleet Research