The terms “business intelligence” and “analytics” are used frequently nowadays in food service and hospitality, but how can they help you make better business decisions or save on costs?
Investing in a POS that can provide detailed analytics is going to help you:
- Plan staffing based on busy/slow business hours
- Review your labor vs. sales to help drive profitability
- Understand what menu items are selling and which may be slow-moving
- Increase average check sizes and understand item pairing behavior
- Monitor theft and compliance with security regulations and auditing rules
- Deliver an overall better customer experience through predictions
- Manage inventory more effectively
The first large component behind analytics is the collection of data. Once you install a POS with analytical features, the data collection starts. In most cases, every key stroke and every item sold are being tracked for current and future use. From this data, trends and reasoning are collected and drawn. Collection of data pertains to not only menu items, but every aspect of your POS experience. This includes things like cashier behavior, discount usage, cash drawer monitoring, and more. This is how analytics are going to help prevent theft while also helping you deliver a better customer experience and improve your profitability.
As data collection occurs, business intelligence and analytics begin the second step of the process: analyzing your data. The analysis allows the business intelligence engine to decipher key metrics including your busiest days or times of the week, your most frequently or least frequently ordered items, and more – over a length of time. Once you begin analyzing your data, making decisions around staffing, inventory, menu offerings, and more all become way easier.
Once data has been analyzed, decisions can be made. Some examples of business decisions made in the food service industry based on POS analytics include:
- Starting staff earlier or later than planned due to knowledge that the POS terminals show little to no activity during certain time windows (i.e. staff to start at 4:45PM on Friday versus 5:00PM on Tuesday due to increased traffic)
- Planning staff breaks around busy periods on the POS, as POS data will show when lulls in customer traffic occur (i.e. common lower head count from 2:00PM to 2:30PM daily, showing decrease in traffic)
- Increase in orders in specific categories on weekends (i.e. Lobster orders on Sundays are more frequent than any other day of the week, so inventory can be managed appropriately)
- Most popular payment methods meaning more hardware is required (i.e. credit cards used most commonly on weekends, often shortage of terminals, leading to increased transaction time – more terminals needed)
- High number of voids and refunds during specific periods (i.e. staff members X, Y, Z, are always on shift when lots of voids are happening – should they be retrained?)
POS terminals are no longer simply calculators – they are able to provide layers of data beyond what was previously available. Analytics are an attractive and cost effective way to deliver an improved customer experience. At Volante, analytics can be emailed in a predetermined interval and format, allowing you to receive the data you need when you need it, in addition to allowing you the ability to make customized dashboards, graphs, and reports.
