Mirus Reporter

Overview

Before we jump into the characteristics of an Enterprise Data Warehouse (‘EDW’) it might help to define what an EDW consists of. An EDW is a centralized repository that integrates data from various transactional, legacy, or 3rd party systems and applications that are used to operate and manage your business. In contrast to these systems, the EDW is built for analysis and retrieval of data rather than the upkeep of individual transactional records.

Ralph Kimball, one of the original architects of data warehousing and someone whose teachings we adhere to, provided a more concise definition of a data warehouse: “A data warehouse is a copy of transaction data specifically structured for query and analysis.”.

Finding new ways to maximize the overall profitability of a restaurant business is on the mind of every restaurant owner. Whether you have a few restaurants or a few hundred, you’re constantly trying to think up ways to beef up the profit margin. Your executives analyze the numbers, think up ideas to control costs, cut down on food waste, offer Limited Time Offers, cut back labor hours and eliminate overtime, all with the ultimate goal of increasing profitability. But what steps are taken to ensure that any of these ideas will prove successful? Are they examining performance metrics in order to track and evaluate what steps are effective and which areas need improvement?

2017, what a year it was for the restaurant industry. We saw our share of ups and downs having fought through hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. The stock market hit record highs with increased valuations of some restaurant stocks. There were many major acquisitions throughout the industry.

Mirus also had a busy year. This 2017 Year in Review details some of the highlights from the year.

The CTO Challenge: Labor

One of the many challenges of the restaurant CTO is to implement a reporting solution that can help lower labor costs and maximize profits. They’re tasked with integrating the latest technology, seeking the right platforms for their structure, drive success and create a competitive lead. The days of Excel spreadsheets are numbered. Ultimately, the CTO needs to find and recommend a platform that will aid restaurant executives in making the best decisions in operations and finance and developing strategies that provide a significant ROI. The CTO’s research and definitive recommendation of the suitable reporting tool is vital and can affect the productivity (or lack thereof) of all departments.

Analyzing Restaurant Profits

Restaurants are changing the way they analyze profits and performance. New techniques for examining data are being used. New metrics are being calculated. And perhaps the most important change is the amount of data being examined every day, and throughout the day in some cases.

Historically, restaurants reported highly summarized data each day to manage the business. Sales for Lunch or Dinner, or sales mix for a day or week, or labor dollars as a percent of sales for the day are typical examples. Summarized data can mask operational issues, and it limits the depth of performance analysis you can conduct. For example, a daily labor metric could hide the fact that there were hours where too many employees were on the clock while at different times of the day staffing was insufficient to service customer demand.

Why is it difficult to find and organize reporting data?

All you want is a factual answer to an important question you have about the business. It may take hours or days of labor to get all of the data put together properly. But you need to make a critical decision and you need the data to figure out the best course of action. To make matters worse, if you need to the data refreshed again in six weeks, it will take just as long to compile the data.

According to Microsoft, there are 1.2B (that’s right, B for Billion) Office users today. Of that, roughly 750M use Excel. Wow! That’s a lot of number crunching going on.

Error-Prone 

But what’s even more interesting is that 9 out of 10 (88%) spreadsheets have errors on them – that warrants another Wow! That’s a lot of inaccurate information being used by companies. And depending on the data being reported it could have a significant impact on a company’s regulatory compliance, perceived health not to mention incorrect assumptions being made about strategy, marketing, etc.

Today, for many restaurant companies, the challenge of harnessing the myriad of disparate data generated by the systems (POS, BOH, ERP, etc.) used to operate and manage their businesses is just that, a challenge. And when it comes to the Human Resource (HR) department, well, they're no different - the reason being, data associated with different tasks such as hiring, job satisfaction surveys, training details and performance management reviews all reside in different databases.

What a great conference this year! I want to thank everyone who joined us, especially the presenters and panelists. This year we made it back to lively and always exciting Vegas strip. Check out our photos here.

Gone are the days of consumers ordering meals from menus delivered in the mail or left at their doorsteps. The frustration of dictating the order and repeating credit card information to a restaurant employee, struggling to hear over the background noise of a bustling restaurant is coming to an end. Once again, technological strides have brought us one step closer to making our lives easier. All we have to do is download the app, put in our location, and we're shown dozens (if not hundreds) of restaurants in our area that we can choose from. Whether placing an advanced order through an app and having the food waiting for you upon arrival or getting meal ideas for delivery by having access to a plethora of choices, the food ordering apps were intended to take us to the next level of convenience.