Mirus Reporter

In 2023, Mirus continued its mission to empower multi-unit restaurant operators with cutting-edge data management solutions. With the introduction of several new integrations, we expanded our capabilities, enabling restaurants to unlock actionable insights and streamline operations like never before. Let's explore the exciting additions to Mirus' integration portfolio.

Restaurants generate an extraordinary amount of data from a number of systems. While some data stays in the system it is produced in, other pieces of data are transformed and sent to various other systems. With the growing emphasis on data-driven decision-making, restaurant companies are seeking reliable solutions to consolidate and provide access to data so everyone is on the same page. This is where a robust System of Record (SoR) comes into play. Learn the advantages of using a Data Warehouse as a Restaurant System of Record. 

2022 was a busy year for the Mirus team. We welcomed 10 new multi-unit restaurant clients with a total of over 1,000 locations. Our Development team rolled out a number of new features and improvements. While our Integrations team added several brand new restaurant software integrations to our ever growing integration list. Learn more about this year's new data integrations. 

For those following our irregular updates on the impact of Covid on restaurants, the world turned upside down for many in the past week. The picture below shows the last 7 days of Mirus Index. What do you think is going on?

The restaurant business is complex, much more so than customers would typically believe. We have lived through an explosion of new software tools that help restaurant operators manage this complexity and in the process they have created a new dilemma; understanding it all.

What's data integration and how is it leveraged?

Data integration is a process in which heterogeneous data (finance, marketing, operations, sales, customer, mystery shop, cleanliness, inventory, etc.) is organized and cleansed into a data warehouse. It is leveraged when it's accessible through a platform that allows it to be leveraged together to form meaningful and actionable reports.

What are some challenges restaurants face today?

Restaurant companies are drowning in data about their customers, operational execution, internal business processes, finances, suppliers, partners, and competitors. Many can't leverage this flood of data and convert it to actionable information for growing revenue, increasing profitability, and efficiently operating the business.

Why? Well, there are multiple reasons, here's two that come to mind:

Data collection is important but the quality of data for a restaurant enterprise is key to ensuring that it is used in the most productive way. Inaccurate and outdated data can affect overall productivity. When multiple sources of data are getting pulled into one database, duplicate and/or erroneous information can be inevitable.

Data cleansing is the process of finding and correcting flawed information from your restaurant company’s database. The process is mainly used where incorrect, incomplete, or irrelevant details are identified and then modified, swapped or cleared out. Data cleansing is important because it improves the quality of your data and in doing so, increases productivity, while simultaneously doing away with potential expenses, and helping to improve ROI. Managing and ensuring that the data is clean can provide significant business value and making decisions without being able to weigh them against a strong, valid set of data can hurt a restaurant business.

Successful Decisions

In today’s competitive marketplace, restaurant companies are seeking ways to become more competitive, more efficient, and more able to anticipate and meet their needs and the needs of their customers. Restaurants with a holistic view of their company, suppliers, and customers, and how those different areas interact with each other, are in a stronger position to make more successful decisions.

The Challenge

Restaurant companies generate a lot of data on a daily basis from all the systems they have in place. How you collect, organize, combine, analyze and distribute that data can have a big impact on the overall success of the business.

Mirus Restaurant Solutions is a leading provider of business intelligence and data warehouse services for the restaurant industry. The past 25 years have provided us with an enormous amount of educational experiences that have allowed us to fine tune and become the innovative company we are today. But just where did we come from and how has that shaped us? Let’s take a trip through time to see how Mirus began, what we’ve learned and how it’s made us who we are today.

Too Much Data

Restaurant companies collect a lot of data on a daily basis from all the systems they have in place. How they organize, combine, analyze and distribute that data can have a big impact on the overall success of their business. Certain restaurant companies seek help from outside sources. However, some business intelligence and performance management software can be complicated and difficult to use and understand, using jargon that’s meant for IT professionals. This isn’t very helpful for a financial analyst, for example, who needs specific information and has to report to executives waiting for answers to pertinent questions.

Furthermore, many of these BI alternatives aren’t capable of getting all the data from all the sources. Thereby only being partially helpful. So the Financial Analyst needs to fortify the missing information. He/she needs to piece the data together using the only other way they can think of: Excel.

Over time, especially as their business expands, they begin to realize this way of putting information together can not filter manual errors and is extremely time-consuming. Sometimes restaurant executives can spend all their time creating reports and be left with no time to review them. Additional challenges, as a result, can be: