How We Saved One Restaurant Over $4000K In A Month By Introducing A Restaurant ManagementDashboard

PORT MELBOURNE, Australia - March 21, 2017 - PRLog -- In most cases the answer would be a resounding "I have no idea".

It was during the process of pulling together the Restaurants disparate Excel Reporting Data into a Dashboard Report that, in under 3 weeks, that the team at Skemaz identified $4K savings in monthly expenses for a restaurant owner in Bali, Indonesia.

$4k may be 'chump-change' to many – but with razor-thin margins in the restaurant business, it adds up quickly.

Using a shared real-time online Restaurant Management Dashboard, the restaurant owner can now view and drill-into visuals depicting live Sales and Expenses figures – directly from the restaurant's existing data; and data entry operations are unaffected because their dashboard is connected live to their data

We also put their Purchasing & Inventory data into Excel and shared it with their suppliers via Dropbox. Having their Purchasing & Inventory data live on-line, easily view-able and shared across all relevant departments, immediately eliminated a common double ordering problem. The kitchen staff can now see exactly what's been ordered by anyone and when to expect deliveries.

With the new system in place, the owner quickly discovered how badly her bottom-line was being impacted by important details that were regularly missed by people busily scrolling through screeds of 'messy' spread-sheets to manually extract numbers for her.

A Restaurant Dashboard for the Team

With her team gathered together viewing the Restaurant Dashboard Report projected on a screen, for the first time, a hush spread across the room. The business intelligence that they were looking at in colourful visuals depicting their sales, expenses & profit made much more sense to them – as if someone had suddenly switched on the lights.

They were seeing daily, weekly, monthly, and filtered values in meaningful charts, graphs and lists. "Guestimated" or out-dated figures that were previously tossed around at monthly meeting were no more.

None of her staff had ever actually seen figures and expenses in a comparative format that were pin-point accurate and they were amazed at how easily they could find data that they needed to do their jobs.

In previous years, critical data had been buried in complex, (broken) formula-driven excel spreadsheets in hidden folders that were unavailable to most. With the restaurant's profitability calculations being based on income and expense amounts entered in isolation and with no cross checking between departments, her reports were riddled with errors – which is why the owner had been so keen to engage us so she could gain up-to-date true financial picture of her restaurant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUSFsN38whg.



Sharing creates Visibility & Collaboration of Business Operations – "Who moved my Cheese?"

It was while the team were viewing actual daily figures for the first time that a chain reaction was triggered.

The girl from "Receiving" blurted out, "Yesterday we received 10kg of cheese, but the Dashboard says that you only ordered 4". The Procurement manager checked and confirmed that they had indeed ordered only 4kg (Cheese can be expensive in Indonesia).

Accounts department responded confirming they'd received an invoice from the Supplier for 10kg and had raised a payment voucher, which had been entered into Excel.

The team went to work cross-checking between their procurement, receiving & inventory only to discover that cheese wasn't the only discrepancy. Before the meeting was over, they'd found discrepancies that went back further than 6 months from multiple suppliers.

Dropbox & Dashboards for Restaurants and Small Business

Later we discovered how much deeper the problems went.

So, we implemented a new Dropbox based Fruit & Veggie Ordering Dashboard, where the supplier could now update his produce pricing to reflect seasonal and weekly demand and availability. So, when a chef ordered online, any prices changes were visible to them together with live quantity and amount totals.

Prior to implementing the Dashboards, with online Dropbox ordering, the Receiving department relied on quantities and costs that the supplier had entered on a delivery docket. There was no cross-checking or knowledge of what the chefs or bar staff had actually ordered the night before.

Without a Dashboard, Your Business is Flying Blind – Without you even being Aware

I know the above may just sound like a mish-mash of errors – and most business are probably thinking, "Oh how funny". And most hospitality and restaurant owners probably think, "Oh not us – we have our back-end systems in place to take care of all that".

But, prior to implementing Dashboards for this restaurant, her staff were reluctant to consider that there was anything wrong with their current processes, with heels dug in and fixed mindsets, they all had an unwavering belief in the accuracy of their Sales, Expenses & Profit calculations in their Excel data. I explained that they were in fact correct, but with no visibility and collaboration across departments, while their "accurate" Excel data was concealed from affected parties, their existing process was missing a vital ingredient.

The transparency and visibility that their online Restaurant Management Dashboard (http://www.skemaz.net/revenue-expense-dashboards/), with great visuals, brought to her business made the huge difference. With data instantly available and easily understood, they were more empowered than ever before because they can immediately rectify issues as they happen rather than waiting for weekly or monthly figures.

Feel free to contact us to discuss whether our Excel to Dashboard Reporting Solution (http://www.skemaz.net/contact-us-skemaz/) could benefit your business.