News
Above-store reporting a two-way street
Point-of-sale connectivity puts POS systems under home-office control.
July 12, 2007
Point–of-sale systems don't just help operators run individual stores more efficiently. They also help multi-unit operators run groups of stores more efficiently.
POS systems offering above-store reporting capability can provide operators of multiple locations easy access to sales trends at all of their stores, without having to call each one for an update.
Pizza Hut of Fort Wayne is the operator of several of the busiest Pizza Hut restaurants in the country. The company is using SpeedLink Enterprise, an above-store reporting system developed by pizza POS developer SpeedLine Solutions Inc., in its 45 restaurants throughout Indiana and Ohio. SpeedLink sends daily transactions from the company's restaurants, including employee data and inventory, to their main office.
"Importing this data into our accounting package and producing the reports we need help us run our business more efficiently," said Kevin Espy, director of information technology for the company. "Our goal is to use the SpeedLink data to improve our operations, from reporting on how certain coupons have worked in different locations to speed of service comparisons."
SpeedLink retains the details of every transaction from each restaurant in a secure SQL database. The corporate office has access to complete customer and employee information, including time-clock data and schedules, as well as inventory data and sales forecasts.
Corporate staff also can create reports using SpeedLink's built-in report designer, or by using third-party tools such as Crystal Reports or Microsoft Report Server.
System works both ways
Above-store reporting doesn't just flow from the store to the corporate office.
Along with using POS systems to collect operational information from individual stores, operators can make adjustments to POS systems in the field from the corporate office.
SpeedLink lets corporate-office staff manage the restaurants' POS systems from a central location, eliminating hours of administrative work. Instead of updating POS systems one by one, operators can push out menu updates, configuration changes and upgrades to all locations at once.
Above Store Profiles, a component of the Above Store tools in the back-office application SpeedLine Store Manager, allows an office administrator to set up and save individual POS configurations for one location or several, and quickly switch between profiles to make changes. The feature is particularly helpful for administering locations in multiple states with different tax and labor laws, said Jennifer Wiebe, Speedline's director of marketing.
Some chains prefer to use their own data-transfer tools, Wiebe said, and that's OK, too.
"SpeedLine's open architecture lets them integrate their own systems and software at the head office with the POS systems at the stores," Wiebe said. "It's easy to troubleshoot and reconfigure anything from hardware settings to taxes for a single store or a whole region, all from a central office."
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