4 Reasons Why Restaurants Cook with Microsoft Dynamics GP

Managing the data produced by a restaurant (or a chain of restaurants) is very similar to being the cook in the restaurant.  For the chef, there are lots of different activities occurring simultaneously, everything demands your time and attention, and it must all turn out perfectly.  For the finance team of the restaurant, they are facing their own challenges.  Financial data is found in many different systems, from the POS system at the front of the house, to the back office accounting system for purchasing and inventory management, to the financials system.  Timely access to all of this data is critical to making accurate business decisions.  Having the data spread across multiple systems makes this task very difficult.

Building a Restaurant Business Intelligence Solution built on Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) can provide all of the reporting and management capabilities needed to keep your restaurant(s) operating smoothly.  With detailed integrations pulling in current data from both the POS and back office accounting system, your financial management team can efficiently access all of the information they need, all from a single, full-featured ERP system.

Restaurant Business Intelligence Solution

The goal of a restaurant business intelligence solution is to enable managers at unit, district, regional, and corporate levels to evaluate on-going performance and optimize their operations. By using the business intelligence tools of Microsoft Dynamics GP, financial managers can look at all of the data that is critical for their decision-making processes.  Additionally, business decision makers can quickly perform the analysis and provide the results they are seeking, with reports delivered via Microsoft Excel, SQL Reporting Services and Sharepoint.  Provide this important information in a comfortable environment, all with minimal training, using familiar Microsoft tools and interfaces.

The main benefits of a Restaurant Business Intelligence Solution:

Improved Communication and Collaboration

Restaurants using a business intelligence solution built on the Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP system will benefit from improved communication and collaboration, including:

• More effective communication between corporate offices and individual stores.
• Quicker access to real-time data.
• Immediate access to relevant information through a personalized dashboard. 

Track Performance More Efficiently

By using a restaurant business intelligence solution, restaurant managers can easily track key performance indicators across many different dimensions. Additional benefits include the ability to:

• Identify key trends in specific markets more easily.
• Address issues related to performance.
• Track performance at corporate and unit levels.

Better Business Decision Making

Access to real-time data is a prerequisite to making smart business decisions. With a restaurant business intelligence solution, managers and employees can benefit from:

• Accessing meaningful reports to more easily track trends.
• Identifying and addressing issues at corporate and store levels.
• Analyzing data in response to market trends.
• Manage and Control restaurant expenses.

With volumes of granular data, restaurateurs need to be able to analyze their business’  performance quickly, to respond to an ever-changing marketplace.  Unfortunately, many enterprises rely on proprietary database solutions that require batch reports to be manually created, resulting in the analysis of stale data.  Restaurant Business Intelligence Solutions based on the Microsoft Dynamics GP system provide restaurant management the tools they need for real-time restaurant performance analysis. The end result is lower costs and quicker identification of key business trends, which helps keep them ahead of their competition.

By TMC, Los Angeles Dynamics GP partner, specializing in restaurant accounting.

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