Though COVID-19 still grips the nation, restaurants have found ways to not only survive, but also to thrive despite a growing list of challenges by closely monitoring brand performance and improving operational efficiency. However, the complexity of the foodservice business means brand leaders must often source this data from several systems to assess how the business, a franchise, or even a single store might be performing.
Not only is this process cumbersome, but it often means leaders must check each system several times a day. Additionally, disparate reporting means restaurants sometimes miss big-picture findings that come from analyzing the data together.
Though some smaller brands have found ways to integrate systems or to create spreadsheets to better-process the data, many restaurants quickly outgrow these strategies.
“Looking at labor, financials, and inventory can be overwhelming,” says Michael Lavigne president and CEO at CLEARVIEW. “And as brands grow, their needs evolve.”
However, CLEARVIEW—A Panasonic Company with more than two decades of experience providing insights to restaurants—can help restaurants manage all these concerns and more through it’s Back Office Software, which is already used by some of the biggest quick-service restaurant chains in the world.
“McDonald’s, Tim Hortons, A&W, KFC, Wendy’s, and Popeye’s rely on us to help them operate their businesses, because we focus on providing managers and operators with real-time access to business metrics,” Lavigne says. “These customers also bring us unparalleled expertise that helps us evolve to better serve the restaurant industry.”
Drawing on this expertise, CLEARVIEW offers restaurants real-time access to data in a single, easy-to-use solution through its Back Office Software, which acts much like enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
“SaaS products like CLEARVIEW help larger organizations manage people and processes by aggregating data from all sources, such as payroll, food suppliers, and business systems, and then flows that data into a single system,” Lavigne says. “This allows CLEARVIEW to become the technological backbone of a company.”
By pooling data into a single platform, store managers can easily find overviews that tell them if they are meeting sales and operational goals, franchisees can see how their entire portfolios are performing at a glance, and corporate franchisor employees in every department can see relevant data from across the organization in one simple system. This empowers leaders to make better decisions, as well as removes productivity barriers at all levels of a company.
For example, marketing teams could access financial data to track how well promotions are performing or plan new promotions based on inventory levels. Meanwhile, finance managers at the franchisor level might need to track royalty, advertising, and sales data to get an accurate picture of how the company is performing, as well as to make accurate projections.
Franchisees, on the other hand, can gain access to in-depth data on each store in their organization so that they no longer have to manually gather data for presentations. Additionally, CLEARVIEW’s checklist features make it easy to tell which restaurants are or are not adhering to COVID precautions. At the same time, store managers can track individual location performance and find ways to improve staff performance and in-house operations in real time.
“CLEARVIEW can scale to serve the needs of anyone in the company,” Lavigne says. “Everyone from store managers to leaders at the franchisor level can make moment-to-moment decisions, rather than waiting for end-of-day reports, creating a more streamlined and profitable organization.”
Best of all, CLEARVIEW was built specifically for restaurants, and up to 60 percent of the CLEARVIEW team has worked in the quick-service industry, ensuring the software meets the rigorous demands of foodservice. Meanwhile, CLEARVIEW also benefits from being a part of the Panasonic family.
“Panasonic has been around for a little over 100 years,” Lavigne says. “It’s one of the world’s most recognizable, trusted brands.”
No matter what challenges the next year brings, improved access to data through an advanced data-driven platform, such as CLEARVIEW, can help restaurants prepare for the future by creating more profitable, efficient organizations.
“We work closely with our customer partners to help them make better business decisions today,” Lavigne says, “but our customers can also expect us to work with them hand-in-hand so we can build a path to the future together.”
To learn more about how better access to data can help your restaurant meet its business goals, visit the CLEARVIEW website.
By Peggy Carouthers
