How to guide the right decisions with clear insights
How to guide the right decisions with clear insights
The concept of harnessing and interpreting the large volume of data that a business generates to drive better decision making has been around for some 20 years. But the hospitality sector, has been slow or otherwise unable to take advantage. While some chains with a sophisticated IT infrastructure are seeing the rewards, others are only now beginning to dip their toes in these unfamiliar waters.
With the convergence of analytics software, cloud computing and mobile devices, the benefits of ‘big data’ are more accessible now to just about everyone in the business. But it’s not enough to just have the data. With so much information available, it needs to be aggregated smartly and concisely. Otherwise, many operators will end up spending all their time collating and combining data to create KPI reports instead of uncovering trends and acting on valuable insights.
These are uncertain and unprecedented times for the hospitality industry. Restrictions and new health and safety operating protocols to ensure the hospitality industry can operate safely throughout the COVID-19 pandemic have weighed heavily on operators and resulted in increased costs, fluctuating demand and reduced occupancy, covers and revenues, making it ever more challenging to operate profitably. In order to get ahead and to stay profitable, the key is to fully understand your business so you can make well-informed key decisions.
This begins with understanding the numbers. Of course, success in hospitality has always depended on quantitative measurement. How much did we sell? Which sales channel is performing best? What’s our gross profit and which way is it moving? What’s happening to our staffing costs and how quickly are they rising? Based on years of experience, most operators have had a reasonable idea of the overall picture but a ‘reasonable idea’ isn’t enough. With increasingly narrow margins, businesses can’t rely on ‘guestimates’. The savviest operators understand the power of seeing the full picture. By knowing exactly what’s going on, they can make informed decisions, adjust course where necessary, and better predict the future.
By digging deep into their business insights and their customers’ behaviour, they are equipped with what they need to adjust pricing, adapt menus, review purchases, change or better manage suppliers, improve employee training, set more accurate schedules, and so on. Leveraging data is the key to success.
How to best use the mountains of data at your fingertips
Drowning in data can be just as bad as not having enough. Many teams end up operating in silos, working off whatever data feels most relevant for them. For the hospitality industry especially, being able to tap into a wide variety of data sources – and, critically, integrate them – yields significant and almost immediate benefits. After all, it is impossible to see the whole picture when only looking at a handful of puzzle pieces. Since manually correlating this data is both time-consuming and prohibitively expensive, the right tool is critical for success (and sanity).
By using technology to quickly collate, analyse and understand huge amounts of data from different sources, you can transform the customer experience and operate more efficiently. What kind of data are we talking about? Just about anything a hospitality business generates, including the well-known such as Point of Sale (POS), inventory, reservations and staffing data but also industry trends, weather, national and local event information, guest and employee feedback including reviews, footfall data as well as competitor analysis.
Collating the valuable and relevant information is the key here. And the biggest challenge to organisations optimising their insight strategies. The end goal is, and should always be, to provide a holistic view of the operation. This can allow you to understand your business in minute detail, and uncover causation previously deemed unpredictable. For example, by combining scheduling data alongside transactional POS and customer feedback, management can look to understand the impact that scheduling correctly or incorrectly has on customer spend and experience.
This understanding can be transformed into action by using data effectively to better schedule employees and focus on the areas of customer feedback that need attention leading to an improved customer experience and therefore increasing the likelihood of increased spend and improved frequency of visit. Being able to find insights in your business, and take informed action as a result to make significant improvements, can keep you going in the tough trading climate we find ourselves in. To learn more about Data and Analytics in your hospitality business we’ve created a detailed whitepaper to guide you through the process. Download it here.
About Fourth
Fourth provides end-to-end, best-in-class technology and services for the restaurant and hospitality industries. Their procurement, inventory, and workforce management solutions, coupled with the industry's most complete data and analytics suite, give operators the actionable insights they need to control costs, scale profitability, improve employee engagement, and maintain compliance. Since its merger with US-based HotSchedules, Fourth serves more than 7,000 customers across 120,000 locations globally.
Fourth works with multi-national companies in the hospitality industry, including Fullers, Gaucho, Hilton, Krispy Crème, Leon, Café Nero, Soho House, Subway, Strada, Wagamama and Stonegate.
For more information, please visit www.fourth.com
Social Media details:
https://www.facebook.com/fourthnews/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/fourth