PR

Restaurant Point of Sale (POS) Systems: Enhance Your Profit With Innovation – Time to Start it NOW!

Restaurant and hospitality operators these days have become much more more tech proficient compared to the recent years, no wonder they’re really good in sourcing out POS software. They’re not only proficient in using new POS systems, but they are also demanding for more advance POS software they can afford. If youre thinking about uprading your POS systems, here’s a simple 2009 POS guide for you.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that hospitality operators were excited to see the first restaurant POS Systems available in the market. Can you still remember what your first restaurant POS system was? You had a sleek looking keypad, a little black plastic “key” and a bible of PLU codes to memorize. You punched in your food and beverage orders, and miraculously, your beverage orders printed out at the bar while your food orders printed simultaneously in the kitchen. It was sleek and revolutionary, everything was so exciting to do with a POS system

The world of restaurant POS systems has come a long way since those early days. Today’s hospitality operators are much more tech savvy than they’ve ever been, and the POS industry is slowly responding. The big players in POS software systems are still out there, but a growing number of smaller companies have emerged in recent years, and the big guys could see their portion of the POS pie gobbled up quickly if they don’t offer what today’s hospitality operators are demanding. So here are the top features you should be looking for if you decide to invent on a new POS system in 2009.

Data Reporting -

The top two issues every hospitality-based business wants to get a handle on are food cost, and labor costs. Keep those things in check, and your chances of succeeding in such a competitive market are greatly increased. A modern POS will help you handle these profit killers properly by allowing your managers to access important data with ease and in real time. A POS system with excellent data reporting capabilities will allow you to forecast business volumes, which gives managers the data they need to fine tune scheduling and avoid unneeded expenses on labor. Time and attendance can be precisely monitored. Real time and instant access to data also allows managers to spot problems quickly and make snap decisions to address discrepancies in cash flow and adjust inventory levels. The POS system will pay for itself many times over if it can help you get a handle on these two issues alone.

Back Office Management & Integration -

By linking all your POS terminals together, combined with the ability to run reports, make menu and pricing changes on the fly, check inventory levels and consolidate payroll at one central location is is very important in|is important in running an efficient and profitable business. A modern POS system will allow you to do these tasks quick and with no effort, all from the back office. Integration and back office management capability should be the first thing on your list.

Customer Relationship Management -

Effective promotions can can go from a simple sales ad (can be a promotion on your poor performing meals or items) into a huge profit booster. Making sure your coupon or gift card programs are working perfectly is a bit hard. If your POS system can quickly help you evaluate which promotions are working and which ones aren’t, so you no longer need to waste money and time. Having a POS system that can keep track of customer histories, their likes and dislikes, comments, suggestions, etc. can give you valuable insight into what future promotions to put in effect, and which ones would perform well. Effective customer loyalty and points programs keep your customers coming back. When it comes to CRM, let your POS system do most of the thinking for you.

Wireless Mobile Computing & Hand Held Technology -

Wireless point of sale systems are imperative for businesses that operate outside of traditional, brick and mortar locations. Venues such as ski resorts, fairs or even stadiums can greatly benefit from a wireless point of sale system (a portable concession stand or use in a private suite). In a more traditional environment, such as a restaurant, the benefits of having wireless, at the table ordering capabilities through hand held units are many.

With wireless hand held units, your serving staff saves time taking orders with out having to line up to get access to the POS terminal, and therefore are much more productive. Since each order is transmitted instantly, at the table, serving staff are able to serve from one table to the next. Managers can reduce staffing levels by scheduling just a few skilled staff, give them larger sections, and make their primary focus greeting customers, taking orders and up-selling. Non-serving staff can then be hired (at significant payroll savings) to dispatch food and clean sections. When servers are able to remain on the floor, the result is a superior customer service experience for your regular customers and increased sales for you through up-selling and faster table turns. Also, waste is cut down considerably, since placing orders at the table greatly reduces errors.

Another great feature of wireless hand held devices is that it sends evenly spaced orders to the kitchen, so your kitchen can prepare the orders more properly by not overwhelming it with too many orders at once. By this, efficiency is greatly increased in your kitchen and further decreases waste. Wireless hand held technology has been greatly refined in recent years, with increased battery life for hand held units and improved ease of use for staff. The time indeed has come to embrace wireless POS technology.

Payment Security -

Having payment security is very important for every retail businesses today. With the incidence of fraud and identity theft that have been widespread, keeping your client’s credit card data safely is very important. You may visit PCI Security Standards Council, the open global forum for the ongoing development, enhancement, storage, dissemination and implementation of security standards for account data protection. Is your POS system secure and PCI compliant? If it’s not, it needs to be.

Self Service Technology -

Self-service technology have been the talk of the town in recent years. Having moved beyond kiosks, self serve options give restaurateurs’ the ability to delegate the food ordering process to customers themselves. Touch screen terminals are now intuitive and easy to use, and offer add on/up sell items instantaneously, which boosts average check totals. The traditional “Server” is replaced by food runners, or counter staff, who can also do quality checks. Even the payment process can be taken care of by the customer, allowing for quicker table turns and increased cover counts.

Self-service terminals may not be attractive for patrons who wants fine dining experience, but it certainly is attractive for those who operate fast food or quick serve/casual dining establishments. Remanco certainly didn’t offer all these features!

Enterprise & Multi Unit Capability -

If you run large and multi-venue operations, it will still be easy for you to find the perfect POS systems for your business. Due to logistics and a host of other obstacles, businesses with multiple locations were forced to be creative in how they coordinated the collection of cash and data. Businesses such as these require enterprise wide systems that offer features such as client recognition capabilities, hospitality and retail sales, gift card processing, quick and easy debit and credit options, and more. You may also need a system that can get around cabling and network issues, and preserve precious data in case of a system failure. If your company fits in this category, a reliable and flexible enterprise POS solution would be the best way to go.

With the guide above, you might think that it would be challenging to find a POS system that offers all of the above and more. One POS system, however, consistently stands out and is without peer in the POS industry. Toronto based Volante POS Systems, is the finest, modern and flexible POS system. Volante has seamlessly embraced all the above features and much more. It’s also fully PCI compliant. It first appeared in 1993, and is cross platform compatible, meaning it will run on Windows, Linux or Unix. Linux POS solutions are very attractive these days, since they allow business owners to cut costs by saving on Windows licensing fees, and are easy to use.

With the above guide as your shopping list, so as a hospitality operator you should feel prepared when looking to upgrade your current POS system. If the POS software you’re looking at doesn’t offer what you really need, move on. In today’s economic times, you really can’t afford not to.

Need more information or an online resource?

Go to POS-For-Restaurants.com

The author is Vice-President of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants with over 20 years of experience helping restaurants of all types become more efficient and profitable throughout the U.S.

backlinks clinic

BREAKING NEWS: Attention all Wordpress Blog Owners

About me

I am self taught and have closely followed the evolution of Internet Marketing for just over five years. I get tens of questions on my blog every day from Internet marketers of all levels of experience. I have a single goal to help people who are really stuck, need to make a living and have turned to the net to do it.

From my work I know that probably fifty percent of the Internet marketing community are honest people but the issue is a number of these ‘marketers’ are not very proficient at what they do and teach. Up until now I have been distributing my reviews on various of blogs and sites whose owners have asked me to contribute content about my findings to their sites.

Over 600 products tested

This represents just over six hundred ‘products’ that I have reviewed over a period of nearly five years, obviously a number of them are obsolete and I will only be including ‘products’ that are still available. All of the products I review on my blog have been or are at present being used by me.

Simple to use and organised catalog

To help you make the decisions that will work best for you I am going to organise the product summaries into a simple and easy to use catalogue and every product will be classified by the amount of  knowledge required, amount you can expect to pay, work and how soon you can expect to see results.

First Review – The ‘blueprint’ for Wordpress blog success

I am going to kick off with Wordpress Blogs and what products and techniques you can use to monetize them. Blogging is something that everyone can do and can earn income from and so everybody who signs up to my e-mail list will receive clear and detailed instructions on how to install a Wordpress blog and turn it into a site that can generate cash.

Create once and replicate

The really cool thing about blogs is once you appreciate how they really can work and make cash you simply copy the blog mechanics over and over again to multiply your income stream. But getting the first blog correct is critical and this is where you need a really good understanding how to design a ‘blueprint blog’ and what Internet Marketing ‘products’ and strategies you should use to build a robust foundation for growth and a regular income.

No bullshit, just answers.

So if you own a Wordpress blog or you want some real assistance with your choice of Internet Marketing products then please do sign up to my list at www.backlinksclinic.com.

See you there

NJC

Public relations is not an industry which the public thinks of in a favourable light. This is perhaps down to the fact that public relations is highly involved in crisis communication, when something goes wrong with an organization or it has or is perceived to have done something wrong. But there are so many benefits that a good public relations company can bring to a business, like publicity, building a trusting relationship between it and its publics and increasing profits overall.

Many people view public relations as an arm of advertising. However, public relations does not involve paying the media for publicity. Public relations relies on gaining endorsements from third party organisations. Instead of paying for adverts in newspapers, on the television and in industry publications, public relations issue press releases, go on chat shows and speak at conferences to get their message across. Media relations is one of many sectors in which public relations is used by companies.

One of the most crucial aspects of public relations is that of investor relations. Managing the relationship between the company and the people who invest financially in it is vital to maintain the company’s image and financial security. Handling queries from shareholders and investors, creating a financial image for the company and staying in line with legal and regulatory matters concerning shareholders are all functions which an investor relations team can carry out.

Labour relations are also important especially in manufacture and heavy industry, to maintain a good working relationship between a company’s directors and its staff. Labour relations is all about managing the relationship between trade unions and worker representatives so that industrial disputes are avoided.

Building trust between the company and its various publics is also achieved through acts of good will and philanthropy. Doing charity work or sponsoring development in the company’s surrounding community builds trust with potential customers whilst holding fun events and handing out bonuses and awards work well for labour and investor relations.

Quickbooks online

self management more….

Before I show you my portfolio of really good online tools that are sure to help you to work remotely, I must bring to your attention one more item about self discipline and especially to do with keeping your focus and powers of concentration

I’ve spotted and confirmed a consistent trait in men and women who work on the Internet and I’ve known for a substantial period and I call this trait the 50 min effect. I identified these members of both sexes who apply themselves and work for 50 mins. and then pause for a complete 10 minute rest and are a significant order of magnitude more productive and generate a significantly better quality of work than acquaintances who don’t have well organised working methods.

OK as promised I present you with my list of choice remote working online services:

E-Mail

Google Mail is free. In my experience the search & label (categories) mechanisms are second to none. The only disadvantage so far is that I have seen it run quite slowly on lower spec.computers

Phone calls

Skype used to drive me crazy as the call stability was atrocious, but hats off for the geeks at Skype now as they have substantially changed the quality of the service. For just a few bucks a quarter Skype lets me call and conference in any telephone and Skype user in the world. The current version of Skype has a ton of excellent functions and there are now plenty of of valuable add on applications.

Organising Content

Evernote has acquired more than a million users in no time at all – it lets you to store, organise and add notes to any species of digital media on the net. Just go check it out…it’s free.

Invoicing, Time and Expenses capture, Accounting and CRM

You definitely know that my calling to work remotely was originally inspired by Quickbooks Online, a small business accounting software web application. But it simply doesn’t even come close to the free edition of salesorder.com – a lead to cash system that’s as easy to use as a pc mouse I looked at NetSuite whose pricing (and people) scared me off. My choice here is salesorder.com – Go check it out.

We all anticipate the Yuletide season not only for the brief respite it gives us from the pressures and demands of work but likewise it is one of the perfect times to show our appreciation to our relatives and everyone else who have made life extra exciting and remarkable.

It is also a great time to use your creativity to personally design and craft the presents and business Christmas cards you will give to your friends, family, and associates.  You also have the house and the tree to decorate, the menu for the Christmas dinner to cook, and the parties you will have to arrange.  It may just be as panicky as your normal office day but as sure as the sky is blue, you will like the pressure of your Christmas schedule a million times more.

Anyways, back to business, pick up your paper and pen quick. What are your Christmas particulars?

1.  Christmas cards and gifts – Who does not love receiving presents, even regular personalized Christmas card?  Not you, I suppose.  We are moved even by the usual card from friends merely because they thought of you and appreciated you for being involved in their lives.  So make it a point all the time to individualize your presents with a heartfelt message.

2.  Christmas tree – The holiday will not be complete without a spruce, a fir or a pine with lights, Christmas balls, angels, and other decorations dangling from the tree.  To some of us, it is a noble ritual and a family affair to decorate the tree for the holiday.  A lot of beautiful occasions are recalled when one talks about Christmas tree.

3.  Home decorations for Christmas – If you own a Christmas tree, it is an irony to say that your house is totally decorated for the Yuletide season. The stocking by the fireplace, the wreath on the front door, and Christmas embellishments has to be strategically placed over the entire area of the house.  So make sure your supplies are well handled after taking them down from the previous season.

4.  Menu for the Christmas banquet – If you are one of those families who gather for a peaceful banquet during Christmas, then you are used to the frantic last minute drives to the grocery store for a pound more of flour and an extra quart of milk.  After a scrumptious and filling dinner, the family would gather around the fireplace for some good time together.

5.  Christmas parties – Well, who doesn’t love to revel in this holiday season?  Family reunions, company parties, and gathering with friends, your calendar is certainly full with party appointments. Then you’ll have to be prepared with the clothes, the gifts for everyone else attending, and other tiny elements you’ll possibly forget until the last minute.

All of us have fond memories to share but, of course, there are in addition drab ones we would somewhat stop thinking about.  To avoid them, you just have to list your Christmas ideas and prepare earlier.

Quickbooks online

Obviously not everyone is allowed to work remotely as lots of careers require individuals to be at their office or travel to undertake their work face to face. But for those of us who can or want to work remotely then I thought it would be useful to share what I have learned and present some practical directions by putting it on the net in the hope that I could give others helpful shortcuts for adapting to remote working or supervising remote workers.

I must tell you you that there are a substantial number of so called ’experts’ on the net who will try and make you purchase guides for substantial sums of money, believe me you don’t need to do this.

I am blessed to be allowed to work wherever I choose and just about everyone who asks me what I do for a living wants to learn how I manage to work remotely. Don’t get the wrong idea I am still learning about the art of remote working as all of the time I encounter folks on the web who teach me new ways and I am repeatedly finding new tools and methods that make my life simpler and make me more effective.

Throughout the past 7 years I have immensely adapted my working methods to enable me to do the whole of my work remotely with a kit of web tools and robust self discipline. One late night whilst surfing the Internet I discovered Quickbooks online and this opened my eyes to what just might be possible. The discovery of online ‘on demand’ small business accounting software was a special moment for me and the start of my ‘remote working career.

I should mention up front that proficiently working remotely is as much about the software as it is about self discipline. Working remotely also means getting across to your co-workers, superiors and clients as to what they can expect and how they will interact with you.

In ‘Remote Working Part 2 – Managing yourself’ I steer you through how to focus.

Quickbooks online edition

Obviously not everybody is able to work remotely as lots of careers require us to be at their office or travel to perform their duties in person. But for those of us who can or want to work remotely then I thought it would be useful to share what I have learned and share some practical directions by putting it on the net in the hope that I could give others helpful advice for adapting to remote working or managing remote workers.

I can tell you that there are groups of self proclaimed ‘gurus’ on the Internet who will try and sell you courses for preposterous sums of money, trust me you don’t need to do this.

I am blessed to be allowed to work wherever I choose and just about everyone who asks me what job I do wants to learn how I manage to work remotely. Don’t be mislead here I am still developing the science of remote working as all of the time I discover tribes on the web who teach me new tricks and I am repeatedly unearthing new software and processes that make my life easier and improve my productivity.

During the past seven years I have substantially adapted my working methods to let me to do the whole of my work remotely with a collection of internet tools and robust self management. One lunchtime whilst browsing the Internet I came across Quickbooks online and this inspired me as to what just might be possible. The discovery of ’cloud’ based ‘on demand’ small business accounting software was the turning point for me and the beginning of my ‘remote working life.

I must inform you up front that efficiently working remotely is as much about the software as it is about self discipline. Working remotely also means educating your colleagues, superiors and customers as to what they can expect and how they will interact with you.

In ‘Remote Working Part 2 – Effective working styles’ I write about how to focus.

Quickbooks online

The most cited reason members of both sexes fail to succeed at operating remotely is they don’t realise the criticality of having first rate organisation and rigid self discipline.

I have been working remotely for more than six years since I first unearthed Quickbooks online an ‘on demand’ small business accounting software online system and was energised by the fact that if you can perform accounting on the net then why shouldn’t you be able to perform other key types of of work at a distance?

Whilst working remotely has substantial gains there are numerous traps that people easily fall into which lead to issues that cause cuts in work output and reduced morale. The key reason for reductions in productivity in remote workers is disruption and it is a established and well known fact that it can take a professional up to 0.33 hours to establish their original productivity level after experiencing an interruption.

Research also shows that people who are consistently subjected to disruptions are more likely to be susceptible to reduced memory capacity and are prone to developing mental health problems in later life. We exist in an over communicated environment and it is essential that you are acquainted with the issues this causes before you decide to work remotely. Whilst operating remotely you must do everything feasible to minimise the probability of being distracted.

Here are the essentials:

1, Get a habit, make sure that everybody knows it and rigidly adhere to it!

Good examples are a consistent time of day when you look at or send e-mail and make or will accept phone calls. Before I began working remotely I used to receive as many as a couple of hundred electronic mails in 24 hours. Now I think I am unfortunate if I get over four. To ’reset’ my electronic mail experience I changed my e-mail address and vigorously took precautions to defend the details being passed on to anyone. I then ‘trained’ everyone who I gave my e-mail address to, to use it wisely and sparingly. I also created an automatic reply that swiftly informed anyone sending me mail my schedule for attending to mail and if someone must have my urgent awareness to mark it as ‘Urgent’.

2. Get rid of alerts.

Turn off absolutely everything that can send you a interruption. This includes mobile and
ordinary phones and forms of alerts from e-mail such as display events, beeps, display changes to your inbox folder and of course facing a window. Get a door on your office and put up a ‘do not disturb’ sign on it.

In ‘Remote Working Part 3 – The basic implements’ I will reveal my favourite tools and software.

backlinks

I have already started offering free guidance, direction and coaching to individuals who are struggling to get visitors to their web sites, here are my reasons.

I remember with horror the trials and tribulations of developing my first web site. Everyone who takes on the task of developing a web presence should get a helping hand. Building your first web site can appear difficult if you are inexperienced.

Subjects like comprehending the importance of back links and keywords, how they affect Google page rankings and page authority, and the relationships between these and visitor volumes are complex and often badly taught by the majority of “experts” on the net. I keep meeting people who want to develop a business or build a presence on the web so I am going to do something about it.

I am fortunate enough to have spent years finding, rounding up, trying out, getting to know and mastering the immense quantities of different strategies and tactics for establishing a web site, attracting traffic to my web sites and continuosly refining my ways of doing things. I felt compelled to educate people.

I have been getting ready this for about twelve months now and whenever I have had some free time I have been assembling my teaching material. Everybody I have met who is not sure where to start or already establishing a presence on the web wants a short cut, I’m no different and therefore whenever I have found high quality content and tools that work I am going to direct my students at these rather than try and reinvent the wheel.

Everything I have tried and tested that has produced good or excellent results will be included in my training material and where there are gaps I have filled them in. Obviously along the way I have developed some techniques, tools and methods of my own that I regularly use which I will be including in the training.

To find out more visit my back links clinic by clicking on any of the links in this article….

PS: If your’e a blog owner then I have 12 new articles heading your way on back linking tactics and strategies….

backlink

Before putting any effort whatsoever into creating any web pages you should have considered how you intend to get people to visit and ‘consume’ your content. It doesn’t matter if you’re in business, indulging in a hobby or trying to inform others with your web pages you are going to want to attract the attention of other people. Put all of your efforts into getting as much traffic as you can from the search engines. If you are just starting out there is no better form of traffic than the type that comes from the search engines as it wont cost you a penny and it very targeted.

Search engines stay in business by understanding what the user are searching for and delivering relevant results. The precision of the results presented to the searchers are a key factor in maintaining search engine user loyalty. User loyalty directly translates to a stronger brand and higher revenues for the search engines. The objectives for you and your web pages is precisely the same as the search engines.Make your users experience your number one priority so they return to your web pages time and time again.

So what is it you need to do?. You have two choices but there is nothing to stop you doing both if you have money and time. You can create and publish great content and persuade other web site owners to link to it or you can advertise on the search engines using PPC (Pay Per Click).

Without a keyword or a key phrase search engines will simply ignore content. Keywords tell the search engines what the user is looking for. The search engine scans its index of web pages and returns the web pages it has decided are most relevant to the keyword or key phrase. The search engines decision about what pages to display in the results are based upon two key factors relevance and authority.

Authority is a function of the back links to a web page and relevance is largely down to on page factors such as the number of times a keyword appears on the web page. The profile in terms of authority and the volume of back links are used by the search engines in deciding the position or ranking of a web page in the list of search results.

Back links are the sledge hammers of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Back links have two key uses – influencing the search engines ranking decisions and directing traffic to your web site from other internet properties. Users will follow links they find in content if the back link is labelled with relevant text. ‘Anchor text’ is the name given to the text label on a back link and is used by the search engines in assessing the value of a back link. Each back link has a value associated with it which can vary depending upon its origin.

Back links from web pages that contain content related to your web page have an impact on the authority of your web page.The more authority a web page has the more authority is passed on to you.