Operational oversight with a POS

Between her career as a business tax consultant and her "side job" as a pizzeria owner, Bonita Lynn is a human perpetual motion machine. The owner of PizzAmoré in Krum, Texas, travels cross country in her main line of work, which can make communicating with her pizzeria's manager a challenge.

 

Multiple phone calls are cumbersome, she said, and fax machines aren't easy to come by while on the road. Seeking a better communications solution, she became a beta tester for version 2 of Intura Enterprise. The new software is an add-on to her Intura Vision POS system, and it allows her to track every detail of her operation

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"The real benefit for me is I don't have to be there to collect all the daily totals or have the manager fax them to me," said Lynn. "I can log in to the Web site and know what I've done for the day before. I can do that at home or when I'm on the road."

 

Gary Peek, president of Intura Solutions, said Enterprise uses the Web to link to a corporation's extranet site and to a centralized data server. In real time, an owner can monitor every working detail.

 

"It also gives your organization the ability to access policy manuals, product preparation guidelines or even host franchisee forums," Peek said. "It's a communications vehicle that ties together a corporation, its franchisees and management personnel at one site."

 

The platform, set for release in mid-September at the Northeast Pizza Show, is especially effective for multiunit operators needing to acquire large amounts of data quickly. The software pushes store-level data to a remote server at regularly scheduled times throughout the day.

 

"Someone can see what stores are doing individually or they can consolidate those reports to get a look at the company overall," Peek said. "And since all that data is managed offsite, you get a hundred-percent disaster recovery."

 

Offsite data management also eliminates the theft of valuable records.

 

"That can keep a disgruntled employee from taking off with a database, which we've seen happen," Peek said. "With your data stored offsite, you can't just write that data onto a CD and walk off if with it."

 

 

Peek said Enterprise currently is being tested by three chains and a few independents. Ideally those chains will use Enterprise to allow managers at every level to access information relative to their areas of responsibility.

 

"You'd give them security access only to the information they need," Peek began. "If a manager is in charge of one store, he can use Enterprise to see only his store. If he's over six stores, he'd have security access to those six. He could look at how those stores are doing individually or see a consolidated view. Above him could be an area supervisor who wants to see many stores in a broader area. We've built in a lot of powerful tools to consolidate that information."

 

Lynn knows what it's like to work without such tools. "We came from using paper sales tickets and driver sheets, which took a lot of work," she said. And as her plan to add more PizzAmorés unfolds, she expects to lean more heavily on Enterprise to manage her business. "That will be a huge benefit as we add on. Being able to pull payroll and sales from multiple locations is going to be wonderful."