Growing operations with improved reporting at a restaurant chain
Context & Objectives
A fast-growing player in the restaurant industry needed to scale its operational monitoring while supporting a steady increase of locations, employees, and customers.
The challenge was first to determine which elements reflect performance best. Together, we decided to focus on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) reflecting revenue, sales, and workforce, but also social media reviews and waiting times per establishment.
Approach
A considerable amount of care went first into data gathering and preparation. We started by verifying the quality and accessibility of all required data sources, which vary greatly in complexity and accessibility (i.e. cash register data, workforce data, and Yelp, Facebook, and TripAdvisor ratings and reviews).
We then moved onto creating a visual tool that would allow managers to quickly follow up the KPIs: a dashboard. The dashboard design required close collaboration with the final product users to make a visualization that fully served their needs.
Finally, we automated the whole “data collection → preparation → visualization” process to generate daily updates.
Results
In a matter of weeks, we delivered the following results:
Considerable time savings: the automation of this reporting reduced the time spent on repetitive operations, freeing precious hours each week to focus on running the operations.
New, more relevant performance indicators: creating new performance indicators better suited to the business gave our client clearer insights on the most pressing issues.
More reactive operations: it became possible to check daily on each of the chain’s establishments, empowering them to react instantly to decreasing sales or negative reviews.
