Posted by Jeff Schacher on Mon, Jul 19, 2010 @ 11:37 AM
I am happy to announce that Walker Thompson is joining the WhenToManage team as our VP of Sales & Marketing. For anyone that knows Walker, they know just how lucky we are.
For anyone that doesn't know him, he is passionate, energetic, and tireless. He knows our industry very well and will play a crucial role in the growth of WhenToManage.
Check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Wed, Jun 23, 2010 @ 06:23 AM
What happened in Chapter 1? Well, believe it or not, the company I started 5 years ago has gone from offering an online employee scheduling solution to providing an entire platform for managing restaurants. I know 5 years sounds like a long time in the Internet age for a single chapter, but we're running a marathon and not a race. We're in the relationship business and relationships take time to build. You build them by talking with your customers, understanding how their businesses operate and trying to build a better solution that works well for them.
Chapter 2 is really exciting, in the last 12 months we've added some extremely talented people to our ranks, we've found some really great partners, and I couldn't be more thrilled about the things in store for WhenToManage in the coming months and years. We're working on a few projects that will knock peoples' socks off and I can't wait to share them.
So to all our customers that have helped us shape our product and our business these last 5 years, I can't thank you enough. Keep telling us what we're doing wrong and what we're doing right and we'll keep delivering.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Fri, Nov 27, 2009 @ 06:07 AM
We're excited to announce the availability of our POS Mapping feature. In a nutshell, it allows an enterprise client to mix and match multiple POS systems and/or multiple POS configurations.
The common practice in the past for multi-unit reporting systems has been to look at the name of the menu item and just aggregate the sales data based on the name. Unfortunately, this assumes that all of the systems use the same name for an item. If the names don't match, the company would need to update all the POS systems so that the items names are all in sync. The more locations, the bigger the problem.
Our solution is to actually match up menu items based on their underlying IDs. So we'll try to match up on the exact names first, then the names that are similar, then anything left over you can match up.
So basically, our clients can now get exact above-store product mix data from as many different POS systems and configurations as they have, and they have full control of all the item reporting across their enterprise from our system.
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Posted by Jeff Schacher on Tue, Nov 24, 2009 @ 10:40 AM
WhenToManage just got sexier! We've just added the ability to create charts and graphs for your enterprise or store dashboard.
Charts give you a way to quickly follow trends and goals.
Visually track your sales, marketing campaign results, cost of goods sold, overtime, and anything else you can imagine.
Charts can be expanded to full screen and printed.
Select from pie charts, bar & stacked bar graphs, line charts, columns & stacked columns, and area graphs.
(Maybe we'll have to sponsor a WhenToManage dashboard beauty contest)
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Mon, Jun 01, 2009 @ 08:45 PM
We were fortunate enough to be featured in an article about online scheduling in this month's QSR magazine. It's always fun to talk to someone about our products and our clients.
They even included a screenshot of our brand new scheduling interface.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Tue, May 19, 2009 @ 10:29 AM
This
year's show was busier than I anticipated (thought the economy would
take a bigger toll). It's pretty much a local show these days, but
there were lots of people milling around and many of them spent time in
the technology pavilion, though I did notice some tech companies
exhibiting out amongst the non-tech companies. (Maybe they wanted to be
next to the plentiful food tastings)
The technology companies
exhibiting were most of the usual players. There were a few new folks
showing off their online ordering software and some others with
employee scheduling. (One company was named Monkey something, not sure
what they do, but they were giving out bananas and all had monkey
t-shirts on, I have to give them an 'A' for effort)
Lots of
companies were showing off their new iPhone apps. Congratulations Steve
Jobs, Apple has finally penetrated the restaurant business!
I
have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with the technology
discussions. The panelists were very forthcoming with their experiences
and really had some great insights for their audience. It wasn't about
shilling for a specific vendor, it was just about educating. If anyone
is interested, I do believe that they sell recordings of the
presentations and I highly recommend the marketing one to all the
operators out there.
So that's a wrap. Nothing too exciting on
the technology front, but it's always nice to say "hi" to old friends
and hopefully make a few new ones.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Thu, Feb 05, 2009 @ 09:53 PM
Day 1 at
FSTEC was fairly quiet, but I did meet some good folks and had some
good conversation. As I walked around the show floor, I was a bit
uninspired. It's many of the same old companies pushing the same old
things promising the same old results.
Where is the new
technology? There was a great presentation on Web 2.0, but it's hard
for me to imagine that 20% of the exhibitors just 20 feet away could
tell you what "Twitter" is.
Unfortunately, I don't know how to
fix it, but something needs to change. They need to lure more
exhibitors doing new and interesting things, and let the attendees know
about these new things. If it were me, I would find new ways to create
social and educational opportunities. It should be a celebration of the
future for the industry we all love, instead, it feels like a reunion
of the past.
I'm sure the current economic climate is partly to
blame, but I'm not sure there is an incentive to change for the same
old companies that sponsor the event.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Mon, Oct 13, 2008 @ 10:33 AM
I'll be honest, this one was tough. Inventory and recipes can be tricky by default, but we decided to really challenge ourselves.
We set out to solve two problems:
Problem #1 - You are an operator and you decide to change a few recipes. In many inventory systems, you would need to create a new menu item in your POS and "retire" the old one. To solve this dilemma, we created "recipe versions". With "recipe versions", you just enter the date when you want the new recipe to start and we handle the reporting behind the scenes to use the right recipe for the right dates.
Problem #2 - You are a multi-unit operator and you have a menu item or two that has slightly different recipes depending on the location or region. To solve this dilemma, we create "recipe variations". With "recipe variations", you can add additional recipes for an item and assign which recipes belong to which stores. This way there are no POS hacks needed and you can see an accurate above-store product mix with theoretical usage and costs.
To complete the solution, we allow you create versions on variations and you can create as many as you want. Do you have daily specials that change frequently and are different in every store? You can have "Fish Special" in the POS, and have a variation for each store and a new recipe version every day.
We're excited about this and we know our customers are. The bottom line is "no more POS hacks for recipe changes", you can manage your recipes in your inventory system, what a great idea.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Tue, Sep 02, 2008 @ 12:16 PM
We just completed our integration to the Aloha POS system and we're rolling up our sleeves to tackle more. We have a simple polling client that runs in the background and sends us the daily data exports. That's all there is to it. Now Aloha clients can enjoy everything that WhenToManage has to offer: above-store reporting and business intelligence, inventory, employee scheduling, and everything else.