Running Your Operation by Remote Control

For our guests and front-line workers, the restaurant experience is one of the few aspects of our lives that will never be replaced in cyberspace. Nevertheless, the ubiquitous availability of the Internet has forever changed the face of the workplace, providing a cornucopia of information on demand, and restaurant owners and general managers share in the feast.

The restaurant business is rapidly gaining access to technology that allows owners and managers to run the big picture from anywhere they can plug into the Net. With wireless Internet connectivity, those places include hotels, coffee shops, airports, and the back deck at home. You don't even need a personal computer in some cases, as our cell phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants) have become portals to this information.

It's heady stuff, and causes restaurateurs to plunk down serious money to buy sophisticated POS (point-of-sale) systems with the expectation that they will have access to management reports from anywhere they are, and anytime they want it. Certainly, in today's era of communications advances, the assumption that most POS systems should be able to accommodate our thirst for on-demand information is logical and reasonable. Unfortunately, though, we all know the popular interpretation of the word "assume."

Getting information from our restaurants is usually not as easy as performing a Google® search. Although many of the POS companies offer a process for owners to access the data farm, there are noteworthy disparities in the manner in which it is accomplished. It is important for operators to understand these differences, so that they can make informed decisions regarding not only their POS system, but also their everyday routine of collecting sales results, bank deposits, etc. Before you can have an intelligent conversation with your POS or business data provider to determine the best (and most affordable) technique for getting to your data remotely, you must first have a working knowledge of the various methods in which data is gathered, stored and retrieved.

One of the terms for this technology is "data farming." For the non-techie it may conjure images of cattle and red barns; however, it is an accurate description of a remote processor (sometimes provided as a third-party service) that retrieves and organizes operations, sales, and transactional data and presents it to the clients' managers via the Internet. The advantages of these services include reducing individual business's dependence on on-site computer hardware and technical expertise, on-demand access of data, and sophisticated management information reporting, which was once the domain of large companies that could afford powerful database systems, programmers, and management information staff. For the single, independent unit it may be valuable, depending on the volume of business. For the multiunit operation, including small chains and franchises, it is going from a competitive advantage to a necessity to remain competitive.

In this article, we'll review the current and most popular methods, which include traditional polling systems, remote connections, central office "enterprise" systems, and Web-based data warehousing through an ASP (application service provider).