Steve Roberts

New Complimentary Report Layout - Target vs. Actual Overview

sroberts@restaurantmagic.com — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:51:00 GMT

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

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Tags: restaurant software,custom reports,food cost,target cost,ideal cost,theoretical cost

New Complimentary Dashboard Layout

sroberts@restaurantmagic.com — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:35:00 GMT

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 store is being compared to the sales average of the other 3 stores in the group. The dashboard is completely configurable in terms of measure, unit and benchmark selection and date range. This dashboard was designed entirely using the Dashboard Designer built-in to Data Central(r).
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Tags: restaurant software,dashboard,custom reports

Loss Prevention - It's Your Data!

sroberts@restaurantmagic.com — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:30:00 GMT

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 Prevention) is one of the good reasons to deploy with Data Central. We work very hard to scour the POS systems to obtain good data that we can turn into actionable alerts, charts, dashboards, and reports. Here’s the rub… there are POS systems out there that hold excellent loss-prevention data hostage and do not make this data available to third-party applications such as Data Central. They may or may not provide you with the necessary reporting and alerting, and sometimes they charge you extra for the privilege of running these reports. Don’t get me wrong there is plenty of good value in the extra cost to turn that data into actionable reporting for catching thieves, but my gripe is that you should have access to this data if you want it to be integrated into other systems – like Data Central. This is not just a Data Central problem, this is an industry problem, some POS companies are holding data hostage. The data is yours (unless you have given the POS system some kind of ownership grant to your data) and you should be able to freely use that data from system to system.

To be clear – if a company wants to charge for extra reports – we support their right to charge for value added features (you do the same when you up-sell your customers with a desert or coffee). But when your POS provider, as the primary custodian of sales transactions, refuses to allow you access to loss-prevention data – I would cry “foul” and find a provider that understands that the data is yours, and their system is the custodian not the owner of that data.

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Tags: restaurant software,loss prevention,restaurants,reports,software,fraud prevention

Getting the Word Out

sroberts@restaurantmagic.com — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:36:00 GMT

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? And not everyone wants to see a P&L with values posted as real that are actually budgets.

You might be scratching your head about now and asking yourself – “So what’s the point?” The point is this – our new forum software makes it easier than ever to get the word out. In this case I got the notice that some new features for our product are desired and requested. Here are some simple suggestions for all parties who want to be able to influence the development and road map for Data Central:

If you don’t have a forum login, get one (it’s easy – sign up on our website at www.restaurantmagic.com/register.aspx)
Once you have login navigate to the customer forum (http://www.restaurantmagic.com/Clients/Forums.aspx)
You can easily subscribe to an email notification when any new thread is created in the forum by opening the forum, and in the lower-right hand side of the form click the ‘Email me when this forum has a new thread’ checkbox.
When you have ideas you want to share, questions you want to ask, answers you want to suggest – the forum is the best place to do so.

Remember to set the email notification for each forum that you would like to be notified on. You can then opt-in to any forum discussion by topic or opt-out if the topic doesn’t interest you.

Data Central needs your input to remain the most comprehensive, easy to use, and powerful back of house restaurant management system available for multi-store operations. Help us with your feedback and to get the word out
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Tags: restaurant software,user forum,profit and loss

Vital Few

sroberts@restaurantmagic.com — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:56:00 GMT

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 on-coming traffic – vital few measures remind you when you are in dangerous territory, and also guide you towards your destination.

Vital (adj)

1. crucial: extremely important and necessary, or indispensable to the survival or continuing effectiveness of something

2. needed for life: required for the continuation of life

3. lively: full of animation or vigor

Our Business Charting and Dashboard tools allow us to generate visual representations of Key Performance Indicators, or KPI’s, but the phrase ‘vital few’ appealed to me for a couple of reasons; vital possesses more criticality than the word key, and few naturally limits the number of measures to essentials only.

The challenge is not providing the vital few; rather it is defining the vital few. With different executives at different levels within an organization, it’s important each overseer have the correct vital few measures in place, and that these measures work in harmony with the overarching vital few measures of the enterprise. I pressed Ron on how a big company could get a a large number of executives on the same page to define valid vital few measures. His quite simple, but I think profound, answer was, and I paraphrase: “We had an executive that understood the importance of the task at hand, and he created a vision umbrella big enough to hold all of our divisional interests under one common cause.”

Our discourse ended with his heartfelt views on community building and the importance of growing and cultivating leaders (more on this in my next blog!).

Long after our luncheon was over, I was recalling a recent bike ride in Santos, a bike-park near Ocala, Florida. At the top a precipitous down-hill drop I was thinking only of the vital few; eyes on the line ahead, light-hands with firm grip, weight back, and let gravity to do the rest. Just like running a business… vision, leadership, balance, and opportunity. – Steve Roberts

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Tags: restaurant software,steve roberts

Developer Express and Data Central

sroberts@restaurantmagic.com — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:29:00 GMT

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.

On Data Central Criticism

sroberts@restaurantmagic.com — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:28:00 GMT

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.

The Forum Now Searches!

sroberts@restaurantmagic.com — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:27:00 GMT

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

What's your favorite feature?

sroberts@restaurantmagic.com — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:26:00 GMT

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

We want you!

sroberts@restaurantmagic.com — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:25:00 GMT

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.