Mirus Reporter

What's The Word?!

What on earth is Big Data, a Data Lake and several other mind boggling tech terms you’ll want to be familiar with…

Spreadsheets are giving way to technology designed to deal with the mountains of (Giga, Tera and Peta Bytes) data companies are generating / accessing to gain deeper insights into their businesses and needed to remain competitive.

Whether you’re a seasoned IT professional or just now beginning to consider more advanced reporting tools you’ll want to become familiar with the lingo of the day. I say of the day primarily because new words / phrases are being added at a record pace – just look at Merriam Webster, heck, they added over 1000 new words in 2016 alone. The tech space is no different – did you know, not that long ago, that the definition of Computer was; ‘person who does computations’.

More than two ways to skin a cat...

In a previous post, I touched on the impact human behavior has on the deployment of a restaurant back office system. Many times the most difficult part of deploying a back office system is to get the managers to change their day to day behavior to fit the new system. If everyone doesn't use the system properly, it becomes garbage in - garbage out.

So, why would we want to start such a challenging project? Two motivations to deploy a back office system are improving process controls and automating repetitive tasks. In this post, I'd like to describe some alternatives to traditional back office systems. There are layers to this onion, and you do not need to view it as an "all or nothing" game.

In two earlier posts we discussed the Pros and Cons The Benefits Of 3rd Party Restaurant Data Warehousing and in another To SaaS or Not? That's the Question, we outlined where possible cost differences between Do it Yourself (DIY) and 3^rd Party Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. While I didn’t start with the thought in mind to create a trilogy on DIY I guess I just felt compelled to address the (cost difference) elephant in the room. Therefore, in what could now be considered post # 3 on this topic we’ll add the dollars and cents to see just how much a difference exists between DIY and SaaS solutions.

As your restaurant business continues to grow, you may decide it's time to implement tools and software to get better control and insight into how things are going across all locations (Exception based reporting isn't possible with Excel spreadsheets!).

In our first of three labor cost series, we discussed restaurant labor as a percentage and why it's foolish to solely use that method to manage labor cost. In the second part, we reviewed how to control cost using effective labor allocation. In this post we'll discuss restaurant employee productivity.

In our first of three labor cost series, we discussed restaurant labor as a percentage and why it's foolish to solely use that method to manage labor cost. In this article, I'd like to touch on how to control cost using effective labor allocation.

There are several costs that can drain profits but not many are as significant to bottom line or as difficult to control as labor. When costs begin to climb, anxiety levels rise and often lead to knee jerk reactions that might include reducing employee pay, and cutting the amount of workers or hours worked.While any of these may produce cost reductions, none are the right path to solving labor cost issues and may have a negative impact on the quality of service.

Another thought to consider is the changes that come with the Affordable Care Act, mandatory pay increases and proposed changes to the overtime rules to name a few. You can start to see why most restaurant operators list labor costs among their top concerns, it's no wonder many lose sleep over it.

In this Blog post, we will examine the pros and cons of building an your own Data Warehouse, Business Intelligence (‘BI’) and analytic solution versus licensing one from a leading industry expert like Mirus Restaurant Solutions.

Asking the right questions, is just as important as finding the proper answers

In order to find the proper answers, I wanted to understand what's the difference between product mix and market basket analysis? What are the advantages and disadvantages to those reporting methods? Is it more appropriate to use one method over the other? I sat down with a few Mirus employees to understand a little more about the two different analytical techniques.

Franchise growth is often challenged by a lack of time, focus and reliable reporting. Your time is spent solving everyday problems, selling locations and assistance with site selections, training new franchisees and not to mention, answering numerous questions from your growing franchise community. As a result, your sales reports aren’t timely, the information coming in overwhelms you and then there’s a question about the validity of self-reported royalty numbers presented by the franchisees.