Case study: Designing an analytics dashboard for a dine-in restaurant manager
In this case study, I will share my design process for designing an analytics dashboard for restaurant managers, which will help them increase profit and user satisfaction.
Context:
In the fall of 2020, I applied for Design Internship at Procol. This is the documentation of my 48 hours design assignment as part of Procol’s recruitment process.
PS- It landed me a Design Internship at Procol 🙈
Problem Statement:
This is the screenshot of the mail I got from Procol. They expected me to design an analytics dashboard and help the manager know the things mentioned above.
Let’s find out! 😉
What is Restaurant Analytics?
Restaurant analytics is the concept of analysing all of the data related to your restaurant business and transforming it into actionable insights with the help of business intelligence software that will ultimately lead to significantly improved efficiency.
Analysing problem statement:
In India, the restaurant business sees high growth and many investments, with new chains opening rapidly. For some of the older players, the time has come to consolidate their businesses or expand. This requires systematic management and oversight to ensure a smooth transition so that the fundamentals on which their businesses have been built are not sacrificed at the altar of growth.
Constraints and assumptions:
Due to limited time constraints, I took the following reasonable assumptions-
- For each transaction, software collects the data automatically
- The restaurant manager is tech-savvy and familiar with using mobile, PC
- Customer satisfaction is calculated based on the feedbacks collected by the customers
- Over Impact is based on the data of nearby restaurants collected and stored on the server
Scope and Focus:
There can be innumerable ways to process and represent data collected in a restaurant in an Analytics Dashboard. However, in this case study, I will focus on the points mentioned in the assignment and the data frequently needed to be analysed by the manager. The Target Audience for this project is the ‘Restaurant managers’ whose goals and motivations I will discuss later in this case study.
Secondary Research:
I had to gain deeper insights into the restaurant industry and understand the roles and duties of restaurant managers, so I started some secondary research. Also, I had to know more about restaurant visiting customers. I googled and googled… Read a few articles, reports and statistics online.
Key findings from Secondary Research:
- Studies from The Perry Group and The Restaurant Brokers suggest that 90% of independently owned restaurants close within one year of opening. Moreover, 70% of restaurants that survive for 12 months close their doors within three to five years.
- Businesses that use analytics can boost their profits by 8% to 10%. Still, only 12% of companies leverage the power of data.
- Studies have also shown that businesses that use analytics increased their productivity by 17% and improved their products or services by 12%.
- With advances in technology, you now have access to a wealth of valuable information about your customers, servers, payments, and more through your POS.
What is POS? POS or ‘Point of Sale’ data is the data collected by a business when a transaction happens.
Market Research:
While doing the secondary research, I learned about the UberEats Restaurant Manager, an Analytics Dashboard used by UberEats restaurants to know how they are performing in the market and help them maximise their profits.
Understanding managers and customers:
“Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” — Walt Disney
The most important aspect of any business is the ability to understand customers.
To design the Restaurant Manager System, we need the two significant segments of people, customers who visit dine-in restaurants and the managers who manage the proper functioning of the restaurant ecosystem. Let’s have a look at each of them and understand their goals and motivations-
Customers-
Although, in contrast, each customer’s preferences are different, a few markers that standout restaurant experiences share in common:
- Friendly, personalised service
- Consistently great food
- Great Ambiance
- Efficient Customer Service
Managers-
Restaurant managers are responsible for overseeing the efficient running and profitability of restaurants and for managing their employees. Typical job responsibilities of a manager include:
- recruiting, training and supervising staff
- agreeing and managing budgets
- planning menus
- promoting and marketing the business
- handling customer enquiries and complaints
- preparing and presenting staffing/sales reports
- keeping statistical and financial records
- assessing and improving profitability
Pain points of restaurant manager-
In the case of restaurants where they don’t use any analytics software, a lot of redundant manual labour is done. It’s hard to manage the data and extract insights from them quickly. Also, manual methods are not time efficient.
“How might we digitalize the manual tasks done by restaurant managers?”
Prioritising features and defining Information Architecture (IA):
I listed the features that can be included in the dashboard. Here’s the list-
For having a seamless experience of any product, it’s crucial to have a proper flow and an excellent IA. So before jumping into the visual design, I worked on IA so that ‘restaurant managers’ have a pleasant experience.
Style Guide:
High Fidelity Screens:
Due to time constraints, I made some pen-paper wireframes and immediately started working on Hi-Fi Screens.
Dashboard Overview-
One of the most essential requirements of restaurants is to get more insights into their businesses, which is made apparent through regular surveys and visits.
Restaurants have an initial set of core metrics: net payout, daily and weekly items sold, order acceptance rate, order preparation speed, and item ratings. By synthesising these findings, we can group these metrics into three major categories of data: Customer satisfaction, Sales, and Service Quality.
Customer Satisfaction-
On the Customer Satisfaction portal, we can provide insights into the satisfaction of the customers. To measure this, we aggregate meal ratings and categorical feedback, among other metrics. By taking the pulse of customer satisfaction, restaurants can target areas of improvement to serve their customers better.
Sales-
On our Sales portal, we can provide a window into how restaurants are performing financially. Metrics like real-time net payout, items sold, and top-selling dishes are helpful for restaurant owners when menu planning and determining marketing strategy.
Service Quality-
And finally, with the Service Quality portal, we can show restaurants how the order acceptance rate, food preparation time, and menu availability might affect customer satisfaction. By providing restaurants with this data, we can help them maximise their revenue and optimise eater experiences. In addition, with Restaurant Manager, restaurant partners can gain insight into their potential earnings.
Feedbacks-
With the help of this section, the manager can view the feedback, restaurant ratings, and menu items rating in a single place. User Feedbacks are a very crucial part of any business. Implementing possible changes and suggestions in the business helps to get an edge over the competitors in the market and generate more revenue and profits.
Why are restaurant analytics important?💁🏻♂️
Business analytics for restaurants is integral to understanding our business’s inner workings and being aware of how we can improve it to encourage a sustainable level of success that will set us apart from the competition. By working with relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and data dashboards, we’ll be able to track, monitor, and measure our most valuable business insights in a clear, concise, and digestible way, pulling from past, present and predictive data.
In summary, restaurant-based data analytics is crucial to the success of our restaurant because they enable us to:
- Organise data and omit any metrics that are relevant to our goals
- Transform most valuable data into actionable insights
- Monitor measure and track performance with interactive KPIs
- Spot emerging trends that will set us apart from the competition
- Make business more efficient, more intelligent and more profitable
How can Restaurant Analytics help Businesses?
- Increasing order sizes- suggesting already popular wine or drink pairings with meals on the menu.
- Getting more repeat business with menu analytics- identify which items on our menu are studs and which ones are duds.
- See our star performers- get a much clearer idea of who’s bringing home the bacon.
- You can see (and anticipate) trends- know things like peak hours of the day, busiest days and holidays business.
- You can improve your financial flow- If a particular deal is costing more money than initially anticipated, remove it or make the changes necessary to ensure it’s profitable.
- You can reduce food waste- work with the right dashboard reporting software and KPIs to increase the food management element of your restaurant’s operation.
“As a restaurateur, my job is to basically control the chaos and the drama. There’s always going to be chaos in the restaurant business.” — Rocco DiSpirito
Final Thoughts:
Restaurant analytics software is a priceless tool for any modern, ambitious, and forward-thinking restaurant business. Restaurant data analytics will provide an added competitive edge and help us uncover insights about our customer/business that we never even knew existed — it’s through these discoveries that the most significant growth occurs.
Soon, there will be no other option but to innovate and devise strategies, keeping the customer at the heart of our decision-making. The rate at which this space grows will be difficult for laggards to survive (Survival of the fittest).
References:
- Ubereats
- Datapine
- Jigsawacademy
- And some other sources…
