No QSR is an island - in order to operate efficiently and to deliver great customer service, every part of your business needs to be connected. Technology plays an essential part in today’s QSR operations - for point of sale, kitchen management systems, in-store displays, online ordering, delivery services, loyalty and promotions. Every element of your technology portfolio relies on connectivity, making your network more important than ever.
Is your IT network helping you to make the most of your technology investment, or could it do with a bit of a boost?
We take a look at the four foundational reasons your QSR needs a robust IT network, and how to identify whether you have one.
Why do I need a robust IT network?
A Reliable Network: The Backbone of Efficient Restaurant Operations and Customer service
A reliable network within your restaurant is essential for customer service. Once they’re in your store, customers want to order and get their meal fast – whether they’re ordering at the counter, making their selection at a kiosk or from their phone, at the drive-thru, or in your virtual store, ordering online from home. That customer order must be passed between POS, kiosk, kitchen system and customer display – and it makes that journey using the network. If your network is unreliable, you risk losing network connectivity between the systems in your store, meaning that orders cannot be passed between them efficiently. Processing takes longer, orders even get lost, and customers are left frustrated, waiting for their meal. So a reliable network is fundamental to fast and efficient customer service.
Connectivity outside the store is essential too – for example, to tell the 3rd party integrator that the order is ready for collection, or to send a message to a customer ordering on their app from home – all touchpoints in the process of ordering, preparing and delivering your customer’s meal rely on connection with other parts of the business.
Digital Engagement: Elevating the QSR Customer Experience
Customer engagement in today’s QSRs needs more than just friendly staff (although they’re still crucial of course!). Engagement happens via a screen as well as via a smile – that could be a digital menu board with up the minute info on what’s available (and showing nothing that’s not), and with store specific offers. It might be with messages on a customer facing screen at the counter. Or perhaps it’s a promotion sent straight to the customer’s device, having detected that they are close to a restaurant. Screens are an important way to engage customers, make them feel valued and encourage them to visit the store, and spend more when they do. None of which is possible without a reliable, robust network.
Customer convenience
When customers are in your store, chances are they’ll be using their phone – to use their loyalty app, to post to social media, or simply checking their messages over a coffee. Fast customer WiFi makes your restaurant super-convenient and gives them another reason to choose you.
Real-time decision making
QSRs are fast-paced, and decisions have to be made fast to maintain productivity and profit. A speedy and efficient network enables, for example, real time updates to inventory, so you can quickly decide on a discount offer to move excess inventory. It allows you to react to a temperature hike in some locations with a promotion on chilled drinks. Where speed is of the essence, your network plays a crucial role.
That’s why you need an efficient network, but what does that mean?
What does a robust IT network look like?
Here’s the top five characteristics of a network that is ready to support your QSR business.
- Supports growth – a robust IT network will support the way you run your business now. It will enable all four of the benefits we’ve just described. But you’re not about standing still – you’re about growing your QSR business, and your network must support that growth. So the first characteristic of a robust network is one that scales with your business. You don’t want your growth to be slowed down by having to replace your network, so you need to ensure that what you put in place now will serve you in the future.
- Enterprise grade infrastructure – your network is not the place to be cutting corners with lower spec infrastructure. Whether it’s your cables, access points, routers, switches or firewalls, make sure you have business-grade hardware, with fast, reliable support.
- Designed for failure – your network needs to be built for success, but designed for failure, meaning that you consider ‘worst case scenarios’ and plan mitigations in advance. Your network needs redundancy, failover, backup and recovery capability.
- Secure – a robust network is a secure network. It has firewalls and intrusion detection; it may manage different data streams separately to enhance performance and security; it will separate customer WiFi from internal operations. People are crucial to network security, so having a robust network also means training staff to follow processes and be alert and aware of risks.
- Monitored and managed – a robust network is one that is actively managed – that means monitoring for performance, applying regular updates and patches, and looking for continuous improvement.
How does your IT network match up to the five characteristics for success? If you’re there already, congratulations! If you think your network is falling short in one or more of these areas get in touch and we’ll discuss ways you can get your network up to scratch to delight your customers and support your growth.
