With the fear of compromising credit or increasing debt in mind, prolonging the purchase of new technology devices is a common decision in today’s economic environment. Sure, my five-year-old laptop runs a little slow and has a crack in the corner that is beginning to spread, and if I had a dollar for every time I dropped my iPod—then I’d be out buying that new laptop. Nevertheless, these upgrades are being put off for a little longer to avoid spending money that I may not have. Instead, I have invested a small amount in a protective case and external hard drive to ensure that I can still enjoy using my gadgets until I can afford to purchase new ones.
In many ways, restaurant owners and operators are in the same situation with the POS hardware and peripherals in their sites. Many operators who normally kept a tight schedule to upgrade their hardware every three or four years are now pushing those timeframes back another year or two to postpone these added costs.
While it may not seem to be the best time for a large hardware investment, it is every business’s desire to increase its revenue despite the economy. If your business is looking to make a less-expensive technology purchase, consider back office intelligence applications for an easy way to grow your bottom line without much cost, securing a quick return on your investment. There are many different types of back office applications in today’s market that can provide a large variety of functions to help streamline your operations and help your business run effectively for a low investment. For example, some back office solutions help analyze and track your restaurant’s inventory, allowing you to catch discrepancies in food usage and pinpoint areas needing improvement. Imagine the savings that can result in lowering your food costs by finding inefficiencies in food purchasing through comparing expected food costs to actual food costs.
In a recent article published in Hospitality Technology magazine, one Radiant Customer with 26 sites, Granite City Food & Brewery, discussed how they have saved time through Aloha Command Center’s ability to send menu updates to all sites from a single location. Granite City now needs only one employee rather than three to make these changes, preserving company resources. With back office systems, you can spend more time creating loyal customers and less time doing administrative work.
While these examples briefly tap into all the capabilities back office intelligence can provide, they highlight the results operators can expect both for their operations and their profits. For business owners facing the tough decision of where to place their current investment dollars, consider implementing back office intelligence applications with fast ROI’s into your POS solution mix. While hardware upgrades may be prolonged in this economy, back office solutions help streamline your operations for an inexpensive way to increase your bottom line.
