Don’t Leave Facilities Management Out of Your Digital Transformation

Digital transformation trends such as third-party deliver and takeout orders are putting pressure on restaurants to deliver premium in-restaurant dining experiences that delight all the senses. Doing so requires that restaurants maintain the utmost brand uptime in their restaurants, which is more important than ever as restaurants combat delivery platform commissions by selling more food at lower margins. Additionally, restaurants have to master the ability to crunch a lot of data to generate insights that will keep the restaurateur a step or two ahead of fickle diners and the ever-changing dining landscape.

The quality, efficiency, and cleanliness of your restaurant is essential for differentiating you from the competition. While facilities management software may not be able to improve your restaurant’s menu selections, it can generate huge dividends in how you handle repairs and maintenance of your buildings and equipment cost-effectively.

I’ll explore the potential improvements that technology can drive across your facilities and how those improvements are felt at all levels of your restaurant business and the food service industry as a whole.

Leveraging Technology to Drive Your Digital Transformation

According to a National Restaurant Organization study, four of five restaurant operators agree that technology helps increase sales, makes their restaurant more productive, and provides them with a competitive advantage. However, the same study reveals that 32% of restaurant operators consider their utilization of technology is lagging.

Both avoidable and unavoidable mistakes can be cleaned up with precision if there is enough transparency across facilities. Your facility data is the key to taking the next step and you can find better ways to apply it with service automation technology. With this technology, you gain the ability to take a systematic, data-driven approach that will provide more visibility into every level of your operation.

Take, for example, the critical equipment you have on site that’s not only crucial for keeping your doors open, but for providing the best customer experience possible. If your HVAC unit fails in the middle of summer, you will need to close down while a contractor arrives to solve the problem. This is an issue that automation technology helps you foresee, so you can solve the problem preemptively.

Facilities Management and Customer Experience: Two Sides of the Same Coin

According to brand uptime principles, your facility management strategy is inherently tied to the customer experience. In a way, the customer experience at your restaurant relies on the consistency of your equipment just as much as it relies on the quality of your staff. By improving how you manage your facilities, you will also boost the experience each customer has when they visit your restaurant.

Consider the quality of your food, and how that journey begins long before the chef starts cooking. If you aren’t tracking the status of critical assets, like your stoves or freezers, and proactively repairing equipment, there might be issues that you are oblivious too. By tracking age, warranties, repair and maintenance history you ensure that critical equipment is always operating as it should, and the customer experience won’t suffer as a result of low-quality service, or unexpected closings due to equipment failures.

Just like any business that’s transforming to fit the digital landscape, you need to be ready for what comes next. Every asset you have requires attention and care to continue operating at full efficiency to deliver quality experiences that will keep customers coming back for more.