I just added a new layout to the forum for Report Administrators.  This new layout is a great tool for both vetting recipes for accuracy and for over store management of the Top and Bottom 5 item Variances for each store within a management group - plus having a grand total showing the top and bottom 5 items for the group itself.  The return on investment (ROI) using this report is enormous - imagine what saving just a few basis points on your food cost would do for your bottom line profitability.  Start saving today with this complimentary new report layout.  This forum is open to all customers for either extracting the layouts posted there, or to post layouts for other customers.  If you are interested in this particular layout you will find it posted in the Customer Forum.  Down Load Layout Here

A new complimentary dashboard layout has been added to our growing list of reports and dashboard layouts.  This particular layout is designed to present data in dashboard form contrasting a store, or group of stores against a benchmark group of stores - for example allowing each store to see how it fares against a benchmark group of units with similar seats, menu, demographics.  This is a great tool for measuring comparable sales groups.  For more information about this dashboard layout please follow this link in our customer forum: http://www.restaurantmagic.com/Clients/Forums/tabid/100/forumid/8/threadid/1053/scope/posts/Default.aspx In the sample above the restaurant names have been obfuscated.  In this four-store dashboard each...

Today a new question about a report was posted in our customer forum asking if Data Central® could show the tip amount per check, and the tip as a percent of the check, plus sorting that report by the largest tip percent to the least. No problem, we can do that – we can even add our alerting logic so that the report is delivered only when a condition exists whereby a tip percent exceeds some alerting threshold. This is one of the things I LOVE about our product and servicing our customers – our built-in reports designer is second-to-none and delivers consistent return on investment value – this report being just one tiny example. The tip question posted in our customer forum was related to a type of server fraud whereby in the POS system the server was able to ring excessive tips to a type of branded pre-paid card. While it is troubling to imagine that your employees may be stealing from you (or in this case your customers), sadly it happens, and sometimes often.

Loss Prevention (some would prefer Fraud...

Today a new customer, also new to our forum, requested a couple new features in the financial reporting section of Data Central.  Specifically they were asking for a feature that would allow a budgeted amount appear on the P&L as an actual amount until such time as the actual amount was recorded, and also to add Quarter to Date (QTD) columns to our current profit and loss and trend reporting in addition to the Week to Date (WTD), and Period to Date (PTD or MTD), and Year to Date (YTD) columns that we already support.  Sometimes adding a feature like this is easy, but it always takes a good deal of careful consideration in our design process, so that once we add a feature, hopefully we deliver that feature without negative consequence to those who don’t want, or will never use, the new feature.

In both of the above cases I could think of reasons why some customers would not like the change, or couldn’t use the change.  For example, what good is quarterly reporting if you are running a 13-period fiscal calendar? ...

Last week I had an opportunity to lunch with Ron, a former ConAgra Foods (CF) division president.  Our lunch banter ranged from mountain biking to enterprise reporting and ended with community building.  If you were to have overheard the conversation I am sure you would have thought it disconnected and rambling, but read on – I found some interesting connections.



We started talking about mountain biking and quickly progressed to enterprise reporting and its importance to multi-unit/office/branch businesses.  I asked Ron how CF (not a small enterprise) approached enterprise reporting and he explained that the most important aspect of their project was to establish management dashboards  with “Vital Few” indicators.  I pressed him to define ‘vital few’ and he explained that many executives are swimming in details but short on actionable facts.  At CF they worked hard to define, for each division and the enterprise, the vital few measures essential for good management.  Like solid lines separating...

With Developer Express (Dev Express or Dev Ex) being mentioned in our forum of recent, I thought it might be a good idea to explain our relationship with this developer product.

This week I received a forwarded email from a customer, a Data Central administrator (DCA).  In the email the DCA wrote very nicely that a new and improved feature was not delivering the hoped for gain in efficiency for that particular task.

Recently we were able to correct the "Forum Search" capability with the help of our technology partner - Agile Thought.

In a recent conversation with Margee at Glory Day’s Grill, the subject of B2B came up.

With apologies to the military recruitment offices, and to JFK.  The Data Central Forum wants YOU!  It's not just What can your Forum do for YOU, but what can YOU do for your Forum?  Our forum continues to expand with both users and participation.