Why should you be using restaurant management software?

The short answer here is simply that it will make the lives of restaurant management easier, and lead to more profit.

By taking manual processes out of the picture and allowing restaurant management software to do the heavy lifting for you, you can turn your attention away from time wasting tasks and allow yourself to be focused on areas that matter more - driving your business forward.

This article will cover everything, from why you should care about restaurant data, to how to use your reporting insights to your advantage and boost profit, to how you can use your restaurant management system to increase your staff happiness and retention.

By saving restaurant management time, using restaurant management software also allows you to focus on some of the key challenges in the hospitality industry.

The hospitality industry is still recovering from a tough few years, and with people yet again tightening their spending, it is more important than ever to deliver your guests an incredible experience.

This positive guest experience is more likely to be achieved with happy, well trained, enthused staff. With staff turnover being a key issue for the restaurant business, the importance of having spare time to dedicate to team development shouldn't be underestimated.

Restaurant management software, like Opsyte, will allow you to focus on all of the above. It will enable you to turn data into profit, to improve your personnel management, and to keep up with competitors who are already making the most out of these restaurant technology trends.

Why should you care about restaurant data?

Here we are in 2022, and everything around us is guided more and more by data. The restaurant industry is fairly late, compared to other industries, to make the most of the opportunities that data offers. Restaurant owners can see their profits boosted by using restaurant management software, like Opsyte.

By using a restaurant management system you can capture - and more importantly use - data to your advantage. This can increase employee happiness, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately lead to your restaurant's success.

But how does data lead to more profit?

Using a restaurant management system will get you on the journey from Data to Profit. The steps this journey can take are as follows...

Step One: Data.

The first type of data that likely springs to your mind is the sales reports that you can get from your point of sale system. This data is important, however point of sale data is not the only data we care about here.

Restaurant managers should also be monitoring labour costs and employee satisfaction! Opsyte is a software solution that can help you with this.

Step Two: Analysis.

Long strings of raw data aren't very friendly, and using clunky Excel sheets can be unreliable and leave you open to human error - but that's where we come in.

Opsyte's reporting tools gather the data from each module to show restaurant managers and restaurant owners this crucial information quickly.

Labour management data is taken from our Staff Module (home of the employee scheduling features), your financial data is taken from your point of sale system, and you can keep on top of employee management by gathering Shift Feedback data from staff when they clock out using our cloud based software.

Step Three: Insight.

Restaurant owners and restaurant management will then be able to gain insights into their data by using reporting tools.

Step Four: Action.

Now, here's one of the steps we can't do for you... Your restaurant management team will now need to take action based on the insights you have in Opsyte!

For example, by looking at your Labour Cost vs Sales tracking you will be able to see whether you are using your staff deployment to your advantage.

You can rota according to your Sales Forecast with our labour warning percentage banner.

You can work towards a higher level of staff retention by using our Shift Feedback data to your advantage too - learn what truly makes your staff have a good day.

Step Five: Profit.

By saving restaurant management time through automating their processes, and receiving valuable insights into your trade, your key performance indicators will be even more achievable! Increased profit comes hand in hand with using your restaurant management system effectively.

To summarise so far...

A restaurant management platform enables managers to see a wealth of important statistics in one place. By using our restaurant software for rotas and cashing up, and integrating it with your pos software, managers are able to use our key features to make the best possible decisions for your business processes.

Our restaurant management platform can also integrate with your accounting software to streamline your processes even further - and get this important information straight to the people who need it.

How can a good restaurant management system help improve staff retention?

Having a complete restaurant management solution in place can drastically increase your staff happiness, as restaurant management software solves a lot of the main complaints staff have about working in the restaurant industry.

Some of the top complaints among restaurant staff are:

Poorly made rotas.

Lack of communication.

Lack of training and development.

Feedback not being listened to.

Why is staff happiness so crucial?

It's a fact known by restaurant management that happy staff are more productive. Warwick University’s Happiness and Productivity Study found that happy staff are on average 12% more productive than their unhappy colleagues.

Crucially for hospitality businesses, happy staff also spread their cheer to customers – and happy customers both spend more and return often!

In addition, in a survey commissioned by Access Hospitality, 34% of responders identified staff turnover as a key challenge. Good workforce management, and being aware of the happiness of staff in your business is an important step on the road to retaining them.

Improving Staff Happiness and Retention: Rotas.

Without restaurant management software in place, managing your rota can take a lot of time and effort. It’s a big task, and one that’s important to do well to optimise staff efficiency in the workplace.

As established above, poorly made rotas are one of the main sources of staff unhappiness in the restaurant industry, but thankfully it’s also something that’s easily combatted. By using a rota management system, like Opsyte, you can be thoroughly aware of employee availability and communicate their rotas to them effectively.

Here are a couple of the main issues that employees experience with their rotas, and how you can use restaurant management software solutions like Opsyte to help you combat them!

1. Restaurant Management leave it too late to publish the next rota.

Employers have the responsibility to give staff their schedule in good time, but in reality, staff often receive their schedule with less than one weeks’ notice. This leads to issues for both you and your employees!

How can our restaurant management software help?

Opsyte has a templating function that allows you to create and save rota templates, cutting time out of your workforce management process, and enabling you to give your staff consistent rotas quickly! You can create as many templates as your business requires, but a good way to start is by creating Peak and Off Peak versions of a two week rolling rota.

To boost your productivity even further, our templating function is smart enough to notice when you have staff on holiday or off sick – and will cover those shifts with staff from the same job role!

2. Your rota isn’t easily accessible to the whole team.

A common issue with using paper based rotas is that staff can’t easily check their shifts unless they are at work. This often means that extra work is placed on managers to communicate changes and ensure everyone is aware of their shifts.

This time consuming process can be frustrating for all employees, and an easily accessible online rota can alleviate a lot of this unnecessary hassle. By allowing your staff to have easy access to their rota, you’re allowing them to appropriately plan their lives. Staff who feel communicated with are happier!

How can our restaurant management software help?

Through the Opsyte portal, staff can view their rota easily with both a desktop and a mobile app. We know changes happen too, so Opsyte allows managers to easily communicate changes to the rota by sending automatic emails to the affected staff when shifts are published.

Opsyte also offers a Shift Swapping feature, that allows staff to organise shift swaps between themselves - taking even more organisational pressure away from restaurant management. Management will still have overall control though, by using the workforce management software to control who can swap shifts and when!

3. Appropriate information isn’t being shown to the right people.

There are many different levels of staff within a business, and consequently many different requirements when it comes to using a rota.

In order to appropriately forecast labour costs, the restaurant management planning the rota may need access to see everyone’s salaries.

A Supervisor may help in the planning of the rota, and may need to be able to approve shifts, but this doesn’t mean it’s also appropriate for them to see the salary forecast.

Then there’s the general staff, who just want a clearly communicated rota to show them when they’re next working.

Here we have a situation where multiple different users need the same rota tool to work in different ways, to best optimise their use of it. Our restaurant management software solution allows you to control who sees what, through the use of permissions.

How can our restaurant management software help?

Opsyte’s rota tool can be tailored to the needs of its users - we do this with sets of differing permissions and restrictions. You can be confident that employees are only seeing the information they’re authorised to see, and still have access to use the rota in the way that their job role requires!

For example, restaurant management can be given permission to use the rota in its entirety, but can also be restricted from seeing the other manager’s salaries. These restrictions can be placed on an employee by employee basis to enable Opsyte to personalise to your business’ needs.

Staff scheduling can be a frustrating and complicated process, but with an effective system in place and strong communication, a lot of the hassle can be removed – allowing your restaurant management software solution to be the streamlined tool it should be.

Improving Staff Happiness and Retention: Encourage and Use Team Feedback.

Restaurant operations are complex, so it's easy for restaurant owners and directors to undervalue the importance of the feedback from people on the front line of the business.

However, the fact is that your front line workers have valuable insights into the way the restaurant is trading.

Opsyte's management software has a cloud based clocking in feature. When employees clock out, they can be prompted to answer multiple choice questions anonymously. On your management software dashboard, you will be shown employee answers to these questions.

Examples of useful Shift Feedback questions are as follows:

How was your shift? - this gives you an important glimpse into how staff are feeling, keep this score high to improve your staff retention!

How would you rate your team’s communication? - communication is another key aspect for staff happiness!

How was the atmosphere in the restaurant tonight? - very valuable information that only your staff on the front line will have the answers to!

Are customers responding well to our new menu? - another valuable insight, your staff can gauge the non-verbal responses from customers, and give you faster feedback than waiting for reviews!

To summarise, by using your restaurant management system to proactively ask for staff feedback, you can monitor your employees happiness as well as gain valuable insights straight from the front line of your business.

A Final Summary

The best restaurant management systems are created by people, like us at Opsyte, who are passionate about hospitality and want to make the lives of hospitality professionals easier. From coffee shops to high end dining, and from quick service restaurants, to nightclubs. Our comprehensive restaurant management system, combined with a point of sale solution, can help you drive your business forward.

Restaurant software is the way forward for the hospitality industry, and our team at Opsyte would like to help you make this journey.