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How To Boost Revenue and Goodwill with Cloud-Based Restaurant Management Software?

Restaurant Management ERP /

An ideal restaurant experiences a good customer in-flow, filled tables, orders rushing in, and so on. Restaurant businesses face a neck to neck-to-neck competition, and usually, the ones with the latest Restaurant Management Software thrive on it. It is rewarding to see happy customers’ faces, and genuine appreciation becomes a great motivation to level up. This generally happens during regular days. However, as soon as weekdays hit, the business catches at a slower pace. Restaurants need to use their technology optimally and smartly to avoid slow-paced business, boost profit and brand name.   We will share some strategies to optimize your Cloud-based ERP For Restaurant Industry to increase your business revenue and goodwill, through this blog’s medium.  Strategies to Grow Revenue and Goodwill Hand in Hand with Restaurant Management Technology  Adopting suitable Restaurant Management Software can be a game-changer. Having smart technology compiled with suitable strategies will not only help you cut costs and boost profit but contribute to your brand growth also.  Utilize Smart POS Systems Old fashioned POS systems running on their internal system can no longer benefit your business. Since cloud-based restaurant POS systems are replacing the old ones, they can easily help in boosting sales with quick data access on everything from the menu to inventory. Therefore, you always have your profitability insights.  Launch Meal Deals and Discounts    Loyalty programs are a great way to boost sales and goodwill. Your cloud-based Restaurant Management Software uses the current market data to strategize deals, offers, discounts, meal plans, and so on. It is an ideal measure to track customer behavior and how they respond to your services.   Use Automation to Provide High-Quality Services   Use your restaurant management software will help you create KOTs, prepare bills and serve orders. Automating these tasks will free up your staff to attend to customers. Having everything automated also minimizes the scope of errors. Ideal software will also provide every day, weekly and monthly data on the most preferred dishes so you can plan out your inventory accordingly.   Formulate Targeted Campaigns   Make sure the ERP for Hospitality Industry you use provides real-time data and helps you strategize formulated targeted campaigns during the slow business. You can launch incentive programs and promotional campaigns for your restaurant to boost sales. One such example is ‘No-Cook Wednesdays’ by Pizza Hut.  Look For the Need for Remodeling   Your business must evolve according to the dynamics of the restaurant industry. Studies have shown that remodeling your business can boost sales by 10-30%. Check if your restaurant needs technological or non-technological remodeling. It is suggested to execute this operation during slow business days since it won’t impact your customer business as such.   Choose an Integrated Cloud service   Selecting a Unified Commerce solution that provides all the necessities under the same platform as Microsoft Azure Cloud. It is one of the Best ERP for Restaurant Management for restaurants. It provides analytics, database, computing, networking, and mobile integration under the same platform. This not only saves time but also eliminates unnecessary expenses and complications. Therefore, you end up increasing your profit margin and make better decisions to level up your brand name.   Conclusion  A good Restaurant Management Software is a must-have to survive the neck-to-neck competition in the restaurant industry. We suggest picking up the latest cloud-based ERP software such as LS Central, it is a unified restaurant solution that provides all the necessities under the same platform. Trident Information system is a Gold Partner of Microsoft and has served various restaurants and food chains such as Biryani Blues, Haldirams, Bikanerwala, Chocola, and so on. Contact us for further inquiries or a demo.  

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6 Strategies to Boost Restaurant Profit in the Current Scenario

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Being hit by Covid 19, we all have been on different levels. Our financial, mental, and physical health have been tested. Everything shut down for months during the lockdown including restaurants, movie theaters, and hotels, let alone socially.   However, as everything unlocks, everything is getting back on track slowly but steadily. The world has become more cautious of their heaths and put safety as their priority by wearing masks, maintaining social distance, and so on.  These practices have affected industries like hospitality which is centered around human-to-human contact. Through this blog’s medium let us discuss various methods to boost your restaurant business in the current scenarios.   #1 Upgrade Your Business to Cloud and Pay Per Use   Upgrading your business to the cloud and paying just for the services you use can save you a ton of money. Just contact a reliable cloud service provider like Microsoft itself and get the services you need. Get custom-made services as per your business requirements and pay only for what services your restaurant requires such as Mobile POS, Real-time data reports, Customer Behavior analysis. If you wish to centrally manage your restaurant business, you can do that too. Backed up by a reliable partner, you can easily train your staff to use these services and let them handle any technical issues you might end up crossing paths with.  You no longer have to take up services your business doesn’t need just because they are ‘included’ in the package. For instance, if you wish to adopt a mobile POS but want to manage accounts in Silos, you are free to make customizations like that.   #2 Hold Events and Workshops  Events and workshops are one of the most underrated ways to boost your restaurant business. You can either tie-up with different workshops or organize your own. It entirely depends upon your strategy and budget. You can boost your reach in both cases. Some of the examples are the bacon festival in California and the pizza fest in Italy. You can also organize something like this. Such events offer a golden opportunity to flaunt your delicacies and draw more customers.   #3 Enlist Yourself with Different Food Delivery Platforms  Online food ordering is a boom these days, you might find yourself fallen aback if you do not use online platforms to boost your customer reach. Being integrated to multiple channels can make communication with the customer more complex. It is advisable to implement a centralized solution for simplifying convenience, developing connections, and handle customer grievances.   #4 Promote your Business Using Virtual Media   Customers are attracted to what they see. Use this psychological fact to draw more of them. All you have to do is click some nice pictures of your food, enhance them a bit more and post them online. Apart from this, there are plenty of food bloggers who are monitoring socially active restaurants. They might either click pictures or use your clicked pickers for their food blogging. This will do a free promotion for you. Another technique is to create videos, having pandemics in effect, people have become even more health-conscious. You can post a video on your social media platform showing step by step how your cooking is complying with all the safety measures.   #5 Strategize your Loyalty Programs   Loyalty programs draw customers as honey draws bees to itself. Hit a homerun with smarter loyalty programs. You can analyze your customer behavior and spending pattern, especially with cloud-based services. Ask them to enroll in your loyalty programs such as providing a 10% discount to customers who take up to 3 years of their membership. Or you can offer free beverages to customers who take up to 1 year of membership. Provide them coupons, rewards, and discounts when they revisit your restaurant.   Apart from this, you can also offer gift vouchers to your customers in the festive season. In this case, restaurants that run a buffet system get the maximum profit. They can offer a second meal free, free buffet dinner for a couple, and so on. These strategies not only boost sales but also retain customers.   We recommend avoiding physical loyalty cards and going cashless with electronic loyalty membership cards. And managing your loyalty programs cannot even get on your nerves if you have been involved in this service in your Pay Per Use Model.   #6 Adopt Cloud Kitchen   Cloud kitchens or ghost kitchens are in trend. This pandemic has boosted the trend to another level. Since it is a licensed cooking structure without a dine-in option available to prepare delivery-based food.   It is the best cost-saving strategy as you do not have maintenance and operational costs. Additionally, you can create a cloud kitchen collaborating with other restaurants. It is recommended to get a unified software solution designed for the cloud kitchen to make your management even easier.   Final Words   We have mentioned the top 8 strategies to boost your restaurant business in this challenging era, you can seek technical assistance and upgrade your business to the cloud. The best part is you do not even have to buy a full-fledged package since Pay Per Use is available these days. Microsoft provides such services specifically. Trident Information Systems has been one of the gold partners of Microsoft since 2004 and has served various brands since then. For further queries or a demo contact us.  

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6 Ways to Revolutionize the Restaurant Experience with LS Central

Restaurant Management ERP /

 If you are thinking of switching to LS Central, we will mention how it can revolutionize the restaurant experience. LS Central as Best Restaurant Management Software is a unified software solution for cafes, restaurants, and other food service businesses with a bigger perspective in real-time. LS Central is an extension to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, letting you process POS, financials, supply chain management, operations, online channels, inventory, and customer loyalty within the same platform. However, many businesses tend to rely on using multiple software but they can end up causing complexities instead, such as:   Issues with integration and implementation.   Large restaurants have many vendors making management tough.   Establishing coordination with the software service providers.   Getting support and services of the software.   As the restaurant business expands or acquires new buildings the service provider might not upgrade its services for scaling.   Difficulty with providing on-premise and cloud solutions together.     You can replace all the multiple software solutions you are using now with one software. Get ready for more effective business operations and minimum waste. Get a spot-on view of your business and make sensible decisions with LS Central.   LS Central as a Revolutionary Measure   LS Central can-do tremendous benefits to your business, with a centralized solution like this one, you can manage the kitchen centrally, handle tables and optimize mobile POS. LS Central integrates your headquarters and restaurant operations with ERP.   Better Table Management   Use LS Central’s intuitive visuals and graphics display on every dining table depicted with different colors table availability, making guest management and tables a straightforward and error-free process. It can depict the number of guests registered for each table and the staff they are currently serving. It ends up saving time and enhances the overall dining experience.  Transfer orders or parts of orders throughout different tables or different sections of the restaurant quickly and easily. For instance, you can easily allow the dining table to be ordered from both dining sections or bars, easily with no risk of errors. The orders can easily be transferred between multiple restaurants.   Loyalty Programs   You can uniquely connect with your customers, identify them and understand their likings and preferences. This way it will be easier for you to create personalized services and products based on their earlier preferences. Your business sales swear by it. Additionally, the product’s upselling and cross-selling. Let your customers earn points on purchases throughout your channels. This will allow them to use these points as a part of their transactions or access special deals designed for them. You can launch special meal deals or hold happy hours accordingly.   Data Visibility   With LS Central you can manage prices, ingredients, menus, the campaign offers, and manage all the data up-to-date on touch points such as websites and apps. Get real-time data on your operations, stock, guests at hand and optimize it on your analytics and insight. Create data-driven strategies to minimize waste and cut costs wherever possible, increase profit as well as customer loyalty.   Centralized Control   You can oversee and manage your locations from the headquarters, control prices, recipes, menus, and campaigns. also, trace staff performance and communicate with your employees. Analyze current costs and revenues and identify trends and potent opportunities. Access detailed reports and data in real-time and make more logical decisions. Configure your system to each region’s fiscal and region requirements.   Minimum Waste   Use real-time data to minimize waste and inefficiencies, with LS Central you can price your dishes accurately and extract maximum profit. Smartly order the accurate quantities and distribute them. You can ensure your customers received exactly what they ordered. Speedup table turns and upsells growth. Optimize floor space with table bookings. You can also plan your meals and rationalize your ingredient ordering. Minimize manual work and scope of errors with automation. One of the best benefits of LS Central is using single software throughout the business.   Repeated Business   LS Central allows exceptional customer service and repeated business. You can make contactless payments and orders with a mobile POS or self-ordering device on the table. Your guest can customize their orders like adding or removing something according to their preferences. There will be an accurate display of allergens and ingredient data at the POS and self-ordering devices. Also, you can align menus and pricing to real demand. Your customers can order food either online or on their preferred services. Lastly, you can generate loyalty programs for you and your customers.   Conclusion   LS Central is being used as a revolutionary measure for a business. Trident Information Systems, Gold partners of LS Retail have been serving many successful businesses so far. Being armed with 150+ technical resources, they have won multiple awards. For further queries or a demo contact us.  

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Why Hospitality Industry Needs a Future Ready Technology

Restaurant Management ERP /

This Pandemic has brought a massive shift in the Hospitality industry. The tough working parameters have made it quite difficult for restaurants to sustain their services. The juggle between survival and keeping up with government regulations demand a future-ready Restaurant Management Software to be a must-have for all the restaurants.   Such software embraces sophisticated technology which are pushing their limits to evolve into their best vision. One such software includes LS Central for Restaurants; it broadens up to ERP for Restaurant management, and facilities complete business management in the same platform. It is an excellent Restaurant management software, especially when today’s scenarios have shaken the industry from within.   Current Challenges Faced by Restaurants Covid-19 pandemic has constrained this industry to operate differently and adopt suitable solutions in order to survive. Certainly, there are a few things that no one saw coming: Meeting the Break-Even Point: your break-even point can be defined as the sales covering your operating costs. Like all the businesses, where the CEOs wish for huge profits, restaurants are struggling to meet their break-even point. Keeping up with the sanitation and health regulations: covid 19 pandemic has made customers and staff even more aware of their sanitation and health Off-Premise Dining: the enforced lockdown has labored the dine-in restaurants to swear by delivery sales and take always to meet the necessary returns. Good Restaurant management software can be a huge help. A recent techno mic conducted study has revealed, over 80% of restaurants were prevented from shutting down because of take always and food deliveries. This is believed to be the forthcoming scenario for the next few years. Limited offers and innovative menus: to last throughout the forthcoming years, there is an incredible need to adopt more creativity. Offering certain menus, new offers, and out-of-the-world experiences can draw a great deal of draw diners, especially those cutting on their dining out budget. Advance online ordering system: Restaurants are subjected to strict sanitary guidelines and lockdowns and are expected to remain the same way for quite a while. There is a growing need for contactless home deliveries and online food orders. Overcoming the slow pace in 2021 will have restaurants to have examined all business prospects and aspects again. Restaurants need suitable Restaurant Management Software such as LS Retail for food services to cope with the upcoming challenges. How Can LS Central For Restaurants Help You Combat The Challenges In Hospitality?  There are many technological and non-technological challenges in the hospitality industry, such as the need of using multiple restaurant management software to get different features, back office and front office integration issues, lack of real time data tracking, difficulty in retaining customers and so on. LS Central for Restaurant can help you get rid of them. It is an all-in-one Restaurant Management Software that generates a real-time data report and exhibits the bigger picture of cafes, restaurants, and other food services, integrating activities from the back office to the final customer serving, therefore, leading to excellent coordination. Additionally, you can get the following benefits:   Gives The Ultimate Control Over Your Restaurant Since you can monitor each business activity and access real-time data within the same environment, You can eliminate the excessive expenses on multiple software. It carries out the following tasks: This Restaurant Management Software supervises and administers your franchise and location from the headquarters. Controls recipes, prices, offers, menus, and campaigns centrally. Navigate the performances of your staff and carry out effective communication. Computes real-time costs and revenues, and picks up the latest trends and opportunities. Check up on the real-time reports. Uses Artificial Intelligence to read and predict your customer’s or prospects’ behavior. Scales up your business and helps it grow. Centrally Manage Your Restaurant   Since you can monitor each business activity and access real-time data within the same environment, you can eliminate the excessive expenses on multiple software. It carries out the following tasks:    This Restaurant Management Software supervises and administers your franchise and location from the headquarters.   Navigate the performances of your staff and carry out effective communication.   Computes real-time costs and revenues, and picks up the latest trends and opportunities.  Check up on the real-time reports.   Uses Artificial Intelligence to read and predict your customer’s or prospects’ behavior.   Scales up your business and helps it grow.   Cut Costs and Boost Revenue   With proper assist management measures, you can minimize waste and use your resources optimally with this Restaurant Management Software. LS Central does the following jobs for you:      Accurately price your menu and ensure good returns.  Orders and distributes the appropriate quantity of ingredients. .   Plan out your meals and streamline your ingredient orders.   Automates everything and eliminates mistakes.   Allow Customers to Serve Themselves   Get ready to deliver excellent customer services and draw a broad set of customers repeatedly. This is how it helps your business get a customer boost:      Uses mobile POS on the table and takes contactless orders and payments.   Gives your customers a free hand to customize their meal by removing or adding ingredients of their choice.   Exhibits the exact ingredients and information on allergens at the POS on online platforms and also on self-ordering devices.   Adjusts the price and the menu as per the demand.   This Restaurant Management Software allows your customers to order food online or as per their preferred services.    Loyalty Programs     A loyalty program is a great measure to retain your current customers and also to increase the customer base. A customer loyalty program includes the following:      Prepares a personalized promotion and each guest can get an attractive meal deal  Smartly generates loyalty programs to benefit you and your guests in the shape of returns.   Creates happy hours strategy to attract maximum customers.   Launches various deals and offers according to customer preferences and spending behavior data.    Our Final Words LS Central is one of the best Restaurant Management Software which integrates services like Point Of Sale, Supply Chain Management, Operations, Online Channels, Inventory, and customer loyalty within the same environment. Trident is one of the most renowned LS Central Information Partner. For the best support, feel free to contact us. We will be more than happy to serve.

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Why your restaurant needs intelligent analytics according to a CIO

Restaurant Management ERP, Retail ERP Software, Uncategorized /

What opportunities is your restaurant missing out on just because you are afraid of change? The past few months have shown us that businesses cannot continue operating with their old models. During times of disruption and uncertainty, speed and agility become necessary for survival. Restaurants have discovered that they need to be able to adopt new models of food delivery, quickly. They must be able to make staffing changes at the last minute. To substitute ingredients and dishes depending on what’s available. To calculate costs and optimize purchasing, factoring in limited seating, reduced opening hours, and shifting consumer habits. Traditional technology can’t support these levels of agility. Restaurants need to start their digital transformation, quickly, and they need to focus on building intelligence into the business. According to a study by IDC, companies that center their digital transformation on intelligent technology improve their productivity, drive cost efficiencies, and have 8 times the revenue and twice the profitability as non-digitally transformed enterprises. 6 practical benefits of analytics in your restaurant business With the new generation of intelligent analytics, businesses don’t need a team of data scientists to gain insights and wade through data. Cloud-based intelligence-powered analytics is accessible to most restaurant businesses, and can provide tangible benefits. An Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered analytics and reporting software can enable businesses to: – Find meaningful patterns across vast amounts of data. Perhaps you’ll see that your mall location gets more customers when it rains, or that your downtown location sells more wine glasses, but fewer beers, when the main of the day is steak. – Optimize ingredient ordering. Historical consumption patterns can help you predict how much you’ll sell next week. The system can also help you calculate what you need to order. – Decrease waste. Once you figure out that your portions of sauce are too big and mostly end up in the can, or that selling wines by the glass on weeknights ends up in a lot of waste, you can take steps to cut your losses. – Optimize stock usage and distribution. At some point, it might make business sense to move the content of your freezers from a location in a mall that is seeing low foot traffic to one that is still doing good business. – Engineer the right menu. Are there any unpopular dishes on your menu that are costly, or complex to produce? Are your most popular dishes providing you with healthy margins? Could you do more to sell your highest-revenue dishes? An analytics software can help you make design a menu that is better aligned to your guests’ tastes while also giving you more in return. – Simplify staffing. An analytics software can help you see whether you have too many or too few staff members working in a location at a specific time, making better use of their time and of your resources. “There’s a value in being prepared for the future. Even if a technology may not drive clear returns today, if it puts you in a position to be able to respond to changes, then it’s worth it.” Leon DeWet Former restaurant CIO 4 tips from a restaurant CIO Leon DeWet is a former restaurant CIO, and a strong believer in the power of analytics. DeWet was a CIO in restaurant chains the likes of Cracker Barrel and O’Charley’s for 28 years. During his time in the industry, he saw technology transform both the restaurant business and consumer behavior. He saw trends, short-lived fads, and at times, truly revolutionary technology. Analytics, in his opinion, belongs to the last category. DeWet shared with us four tips for restaurant executives who want to make the most out of intelligent analytics and reporting. 1. Find the small drivers of benefits “Analytics can be a powerful tool to find the small changes in behavior, or in processes, that can drive huge benefits. While you still need to keep your eye on traditional big drivers, like the number of labor hours you’re spending or the number of guests, if you can, dig deeper to find out what is driving those numbers. Why those small changes can you see taking place? How do you influence them? How do you shift them? Looking at these details can have a big impact on the bottom line.” 2. Adjust your metrics to a changed reality “Don’t be blinded by what have historically been deemed ‘key metrics’ within the organization. Take, for ex, table turns. How fast you can turn a table only matters if you have guests to fill that table. Perhaps, if there are few customers you should rather focus on selling more to who’s already at the table. Look at what’s happening in your business before you decide which metrics to focus on, keeping in mind some metrics might make sense in some parts of the day, but not at other times.” 3. Use analytics to predict, not just describe “Too many restaurants are still too focused on using analytics in a reactive way. They look at the historical data to try and understand what has happened. Instead, I think that the true value of analytics lies in their ability to help prepare for the future. Where is the business going to go? How do I intersect it ahead of time? It’s important to also include external data, to intercept external behaviors that may have an impact on your business down the line. For example, if you see that the average miles driven by guests is going down, you need to stop, and understand what that is going to do to your customer base, what may have caused it, and how you can mitigate against it. Or if you are heading into hot and muggy weather, you should look how your sales and presences were affected in the past, and prepare. The AI can help you notice these kinds of trends and link them to other factors, so you can plan ahead.” 4. Think of technology as an investment in core infrastructure “I think we need to change our mindsets. An investment in technology is no different than investing in the latest

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Deliver faster, better service with self-checkout technology

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Self-checkout technology may be nothing new – but it’s hot news in retail. The global retail self-checkout market is expected to grow 10.3% year over year until 2024, Loss Prevention Media recently reported. The ideal technology for busy consumers This predicted growth isn’t surprising, if you consider some of the biggest consumer trends. 1. DIY Do-it-yourself has become the norm for today’s consumers. From self-scanning one’s bags at the airport, to booking massages, treatments and medical appointments online, to self-management of personal finances on phone apps, the tendency to DIY has spread to most facets of life. Across ages, genders and geographies, there seems to be a shared preference for figuring things out on one’s own. Not only: many would rather interact with machines than with people. A recent consumer survey by SOTI found that as many as 66% of shoppers prefer using self-service technology over having to ask a salesperson. McDonald’s recently decided to implement self-serve kiosks, machines where people can order their meal using a screen, in all its 14,000 U.S. locations. The QSR giant tested these machines in selected restaurants, and noticed that sales were consistently higher at the machines than at the manned tills. The reason? Apparently, people are more likely to supersize their portions when a (non-judgmental) machine, rather than a staff member, is taking the order. 2. Rushed lives Today’s consumers lead busy lives, and have no time to waste. They are used to getting what they want (from information to communications to products) instantly, with a click. And when they shop in-store, they expect to do it at their own pace. They may wish to take their time picking out items – but once they are done, they want to speed through checkout, and be on their way. According to a survey by Box Technologies and Intel in the UK, 90% of shoppers actively avoid stores with long queues. 70% even said they might not go back to a store with long lines! As self-checkout terminals tend to be more compact than traditional tills, shifting to this technology means retailers can replace one manned till with multiple self-checkouts. It’s a smart way to reduce lines without having to increase the retail space. “Even if shoppers can take longer to scan products than staff members, the retailers who have implemented this technology by LS Retail have been experiencing shorter lines, and seeing more transactions per hour per square meter,” says Hilmar Vilhjalmsson, Product Owner for the self-checkout systems at LS Retail. 3. Smaller hypermarket baskets Remember the days of the big Saturday shopping trip with the family? Forget them. They are gone. Across the globe, consumers drop by at the supermarket multiple times per week, and buy just a few items at a time. According to global research done by Dunnhumby, today more than 60% of hypermarket baskets contain six or fewer items. The tendency is visible across the globe: small basket visits in hypermarkets are predicted to increase 3% year over year in Asia, 7.5% in Europe, and 11% in Latin America. Smaller baskets are ideal for self-checkout machines, as these have been shown to deliver the highest time savings when baskets of 10 items or less. 4. Increasing cost of labor According to Wells Fargo, the three industries that are most affected by rising labor costs are healthcare, finance, and retail. To maintain a healthy revenue without increasing prices – which is not advisable in the era of Amazon – alternative solutions are needed. That’s where self-checkout machines come in. In a traditional setup, you need one employee per till, but with self-serve machines, one staff member can monitor several tills at once. That’s not all. With manned checkouts, one staff member must be at or by the till even if there are no customers – waiting, in case someone shows up. With self-checkouts in place, there’s no need to waste your employees’ time. He or she can use the off-peak hours to receive products, restock the shelves, or advise customers. And if anyone needs to check out quickly, the machine is always active. Overcoming misconceptions If self-serve machines fit so well with today’s consumer and market trends, why has their uptake been so slow? In the past few years, many retailers have expressed misgivings on self-service technology. Some of the most common concerns include: High cost of hardware. High cost and low usability of software. Shrinkage control. Different factors, from scanning the wrong product, to missing an item, to intentional theft, can lead to lost inventory. It has been argued (although inconclusively) that shrinkage is more frequent in self-checkout lanes. Concerns over user acceptance. Some retailers worry that their customers won’t want to use machines, because they are too complicated, or simply because they’d rather have an employee serve them and take care of their needs. Although these have, indeed, been challenges in the past, those times are now behind us. 1. Slashed hardware costs Until a few years ago, self-checkout required special hardware, which meant a high upfront investment. Today, this cost can easily be minimized. For example, one of the most expensive pieces of the hardware is the cash-handling part. The question is, do you need to implement self-checkout machines that also accept cash? Ten years ago, six out of ten transactions were cash. Today it’s three in ten, and the number is still decreasing, Forbes reports. A self-checkout till that only accepts card payments, paired with manned tills that take all sorts of payments, can be a cost-effective solution.If you don’t sell grocery, and therefore don’t need scales at the till, you have even more options for saving on hardware. For example, some IKEA stores in the Nordic and Baltic countries set up effective, low-cost self-checkout registers using a standard computer screen, a barcode scanner and a receipt printer, and IKEA furniture. That’s all! No special hardware – and actually, no special software, which takes us to our next point. 2. No extra software expenses (if you select the right system) The checkout system used in these IKEA stores doesn’t have a specific interface. As a matter of fact, it is not designed for self-service. The customers check out using

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3 ways to lower food costs using your restaurant management system

Restaurant Management ERP /

In the low-margin restaurant industry, it is essential to consistently monitor food costs. As restaurants struggle with rising price of ingredients, bottlenecks in the food supply, and limited seating availability, it’s more important than ever for businesses to optimize ingredient buying and usage, and minimize waste. A good restaurant management system will help you keep track of raw ingredients, menu prices, and spillage and food waste, enabling you to determine where you can make improvements without decreasing quality. Here are three steps you can take. 1. Automate inventory monitoring In the food and beverage industry, food costs represent on average almost one third of total business expenses. A unified restaurant management system that connects sales, kitchen and inventory in real time within a single  platform will give you total visibility over usage of ingredients. And if it’s a truly unified platform like LS Central for restaurants, it will also enable you to link your purchasing to recipe management and to actual sales. Stock can then be automatically added to as new inventory is received from distributors, while preset amounts for each ingredient are automatically subtracted from the inventory count when dishes are prepared. Some software systems also enable you to adjust inventory on the fly, using mobile devices to remove from stock the jars that fell on the floor and broke, or the spoiled meat. All this data can then be organized and analyzed in your back office tools, giving you valuable insight into what might be affecting your bottom line and allowing you to take action. 2. Identify waste patterns and adjust The US restaurant industry alone wastes over $25 billion worth of food annually, according to a report by waste reduction group ReFED. This is a staggering amount of money being thrown into the garbage. The first step to managing food waste is to keep track of what you’re throwing away, in what quantities, and why. Use your restaurant management system to keep a regularly updated food waste log. Locate problem dishes, and establish achievable wastage goals for your staff. Your employees deal with food waste in both the dining room and the kitchen, so it is important that both kitchen and front-of-house staff are trained to minimize common mistakes and correctly report wastage. Implementing a culture of waste monitoring with your employees will encourage staff members to report more detailed waste data. It will also discourage employee theft by clarifying that all inventory, both raw and prepared, is regularly being accounted for. Once you track your food waste, it’s time to start looking for trends. Perhaps you’ve noticed a dish that consistently returns to the kitchen partially uneaten. Whether it’s the half-eaten pancake or the piles of untouched fries which you end up throwing out, your customers are telling you something about portion size. With a good restaurant management solution, you can easily adjust your recipes and optimize ingredients and quantities. If your dessert portions are too generous, you could consider getting twelve slices instead of ten from each cake, reducing the amount of whipped cream, or making your cupcakes slightly smaller. The difference might seem tiny at first, but by the end of the month those ounces will add up to savings. By keeping an eye on your waste and adjusting portions accordingly, you’ll produce profit-making dishes, and will have satisfied customers cleaning their plates.   3. Engineer your menu to perfection Menu engineering is the process of finding the perfect balance of popular low- and high-cost food items. It’s an ongoing practice that uses key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you make data-driven decisions that ensure meals are popular and profit-making. If you are using a restaurant management system that gives you real-time business information, you can keep track of your KPIs and see how well your business is performing relative to established targets at all times. Use the system to break down the data and see how many times a dish has been ordered, what it costs to produce, and what kind of profit it brings in. By tracking KPIs such as average contribution margins and food cost percentages, you can see how a dish compares to the average profit margin of similar menu items. Once you have this information, you need to decide which dishes should be kept in your menu, and which ones you should rather replace or discard. Do you have a menu item that is significantly below the average margin and sells poorly? That should probably go. Is there a popular dish that is slightly below the average margin? Check if it will stay popular even with slightly higher prices. Do you have a low-selling but high-profit dish? Promote it by giving it top center placement on the menu, and remind your servers to suggest it to guests when applicable. As you calibrate your menu for maximum profitability and customer satisfaction, you will also be adjusting your inventory. Why order bags of live clams when they require careful handling, have a short shelf life, and aren’t frequently ordered? Save yourself both time and money: remove them from your menu and your inventory.  Controlling food costs while providing consistently great meals is essential to your restaurant’s long-term profitability. While it used to require a time-consuming process of manual reporting and calculating, today technology can help you refine your processes and cut costs. Do you need more information on how a modern restaurant management solution can help you transform your business? Contact us

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The future of the Point of Sale: why retail is going mobile, contactless and more personalized

Retail ERP Software /

Despite the undeniable rise of online, physical retail and the experience that goes with it – going into a store and discovering new products, seeing, touching and testing them in person, trying them on, and asking a store associate for advice – remains critically important.   Over the past decade, POS systems have evolved from a static cash register at the checkout point to a collection of valuable touchpoints that sit at the heart of the entire retail experience. Moving on, POS technology will move from a transactional role to one of consumer empowerment, bringing the shopping experience to wherever the customer wants it, however they want it.   “What we’re seeing retailers deploy now is typically applications which run a little bit in the cloud, a little bit on a mobile device, perhaps on the associate’s device, perhaps on a fixed device, perhaps even on the consumer’s own device,” said George Lawrie, vice president and principal analyst at global research firm Forrester. “The technology is now in place to do that. But also to mine a terrific amount of information and to give people some contextual content depending on where they are, what time of day it is, what day it is – that’s making a terrific difference.” Here are some ways in which the POS is evolving and how it is helping transform the customer experience for the better. 1. Moving the POS to the consumer’s device Running a POS on a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet is already commonplace in the industry. And while retailers are still exploring the opportunities that this approach offers, they also recognize that more customers expect to be able to interact in the retail environment with their own mobile devices too. UK retailer Marks & Spencer launched its Mobile Pay Go consumer app to beat long queues in its busy city stores and provide customers with a checkout-free payment option. Using the app, customers can purchase their lunch in under 40 seconds.  “Making it as easy as possible for customers to come in, purchase our products and be on their way is hugely important to us,” said M&S Clapham Junction store manager Joe Erskine.  Other retailers are taking a similar tact, introducing mobile POS in stores but also adding scan, pay and go functionality to consumer apps, putting the power of the transaction in their customers’ hands. Spar and Eurospar convenience stores in Northern Ireland introduced this type of mobile app so that customers can check whether items are in stock before they leave their homes, and build shopping lists ahead of planned store visits. But the convenience extends well beyond planning ahead. Using the app, they can be guided around the premises using aisle satnav, scan goods as they shop and check allergen, dietary and even sustainability information, such as the recyclability of each item’s packaging. 2. Cloud-based technology Retail employees need to be able to access store transactions or sales data quickly from their devices wherever they are. Cloud technology is now widely adopted across the retail industry, also because it enables retailers to integrate customer, transaction and inventory data with omnichannel orders, and make all the data available in real time for store associates. This wealth of information also empowers retailers to deliver personalized brand experiences, offer endless aisle shopping, create offers that resonate with customers and optimize store fulfilment and inventory management.  UK grocery retailer Waitrose is giving some of this functionality back to its customers: they can now build a basket in the cloud which can be accessed and added to on any device. It means the customer can begin the shopping journey on the mobile, adding the basics they know they need, then add more stuff on their laptop at home. Once they’re in store, they can scan more items in before they pay. At the same time, they know they’re getting the items for the best possible price as the same promotion engine runs across all channels.  With consumer habits changing quickly, it’s important to have technology that keeps you ahead of the competition. A big advantage of cloud-based POS solution are the automated updates and upgrades. New features and functions are automatically added to the entire network as soon as they’re made available by the technology provider, enabling retailers to keep pace with change. 3. Personalizing the experience A recent Epsilon survey of 1,000 US adults found that eight in ten want personalized offers and experiences from retailers. In another survey by Accenture, 91% of consumers said they tend to shop with businesses who know them and give offers and suggestions that are relevant to them. Today, POS software can help you tailor the experience to the needs of each customer. For example, a POS with clienteling functionality allows you to identify customers who have a profile with you, enabling store associates to deliver highly personalized and relevant product advice. Using machine learning (ML) you can take this a step further, and identify the products a customer will want to buy again in the future based on their past interactions. At the POS, then, an ML-powered recommendation engine can automatically generate a list of suggested products, which the store associate can use to make personalized recommendations. Intelligent retail will probably extend to more touchpoints in the future. Every time a customer shops in an Amazon Go store, for example, Amazon learns so much from their shopping behaviors to the point where it’s highly feasible in the not-too-distant future that they will be prompted to buy staples that they haven’t picked up recently or have recipes suggested to them based on items already in their shopping cart. Hyper-personalized, dynamic promotions will likely become the norm. So when a customer scans a product, they could automatically be pointed to another item they usually buy which is on offer on the same aisle. Or if they input their dietary requirements and health goals, they could have alerts and guidance pop up on their device as they shop.  4. Contactless tech The Covid-19 crisis has accelerated adoption and development of contactless technology. Contactless payments have come of age: a recent survey by Rapyd found

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Streamline ordering and communication with a connected Kitchen Display System (KDS)

Uncategorized /

Since LS One 2020 was released in July, the LS One team has been developing extra functionality to enhance the system. They have put special focus on extending the capabilities for restaurants and food service businesses. Trident is LS Retail Central Platinum Partner, offering ERP for Retail & Hospitality. The Kitchen Display System (KDS) is a digital order viewer that replaces paper tickets and printers in a restaurant kitchen. A KDS has become an essential component in a modern kitchen, as it helps organize and streamline work: No more stained, hard-to-read paper tickets: all orders are displayed on screens, clear and tidy. No need for servers to waste time running from the front to the kitchen and back: all communication between kitchen and front (orders, items, their preparation status) goes through your POS system. Items and orders are automatically routed and displayed at the proper food preparation stations. Items are shown on the screens by production order, so kitchen staff can start and complete preparation timely. Kitchen staff can bump dishes to different stations, or mark orders and items as ready. The Kitchen Display System and the POS are connected via a two-way communication system. Front-of-house staff can see the status of orders at the POS, and make sure all dishes are delivered to the guests at the right time. You can add screens and set up specific automations to follow your kitchen’s flow. In the past, to connect a KDS to LS One you needed to do your own integration. From this version of LS One onwards, you can use your LS One POS system with the LS Retail Kitchen Display System. The systems are connected out of the box, no extra work needed. Picture this: Your server takes the order at the POS. When they send the order to the kitchen, the items are automatically routed to the KDS in the correct kitchen station (for example, the grill station versus the sauté or dessert station), and displayed in the right order of production. When a guest asks “When is my dish coming?” front-of-house staff can check at the POS the status of the order, and update the table. Easy, quick, and professional. Sell groups of items easily with assembly items It’s now easier than ever before to sell multiple items at once – for example, as a gift basket. In LS One you can now create “assembly items” by combining different items into one. The options are endless: Set up deals (or meal deals, if you run a restaurant or café) Create hampers and gift baskets Make bills of materials Set up recipes, managing the ingredients as separate items Assemble supply kits Do you run a chain, and want to differentiate your offering across locations? You can vary the list of component items between locations, and easily substitute products or ingredients as needed. For example, your holiday hamper can include Gouda cheese, instead of brie, in some of your store locations. You can set a special price for the final item, or add up the prices of the items that compose it – your choice. If you want, you can also display the list of components on the POS receipt, on the printed receipt, and on kitchen orders – or you can hide it. The integration to SAP Business One ERP just keeps on getting better Since we introduced the out-of-the-box integration between LS One and ERP SAP Business One, more and more businesses have moved from other POS solutions to LS One. Using their valuable feedback, we have been working on the integration to make it even more immediate and seamless. You can now add a U.S. tax setup when you create a customer on the POS The login service layer is more intuitive and quicker We have added tax synchronization for specific localizations You can now easily connect to different versions of SAP Business One HANA More enhancements to come as the LS One team keeps on ironing out the wrinkles. Endlessly enhancing LS One We are continuously working on improving LS One in terms of functionality, speed and simplicity. Some highlights from this release: You can now add the company’s country information Discount calculations are way faster than before We have redesigned the “send to station” and “menu type selection” dialogs (restaurant-specific functionality) The kitchen printing/send to station functionality is now fast and seamless (restaurant-specific). You can find more enhancements and fixes in the release notes. And as usual, more improvements are ahead as the team keeps on working to make LS One the best POS in the industry. If you have any comments, suggestions, or any query for us, get in touch! or write at info@tridentinfo.com

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