My organization provides strategic business consulting to CEOs from dozens of mid-sized corporations. When one of them has a technology-related question or issue, however, I’m immediately on the phone to Dave Hartman. My clients know that his non-biased consulting approach means that he’ll be able to find a solution that is in my clients’ best interest, not just that of the vendor.

Point of Sale Enhancements

A Restaurant Franchisee was looking for assistance with selecting a new Point of Sale software solution for their 7-restaurant franchise business.

Objective: Identify a POS software solution that met the company’s sales and performance objectives of:

• Increasing speed of service performance

• Decreasing average restaurant cost of labor and

• Reducing waste and fraud by increasing their audit and monitoring capabilities

• Minimizing the Capital expense associated with new system procurement.
  

Approach: Hartman Business Technology conducted a comprehensive Business Technology Assessment, including interviews with key managers, analysis of current software and infrastructure, interviews with software vendors and analysis of current technology billables. The assessment also included a discussion of the company’s key business objectives. By focusing on the critical processes and resources that had the greatest impact on the company’s operating margins, HBT was able to focus a limited technology budget where it had the greatest impact.

Recommendations:

1. In realizing that the company’s current POS system was only 3 years old, but suffering from a lack of adequate and current training, improper initial implementation and integration with other incompatible back office software modules, HBT recommended that rather than initiating a new POS search from the outset, that the company conduct a further analysis of specific problems with their current system and features that were critical to their future success. We initiated a software selection process that included:

• Documentation of current system strengths and weaknesses

• Brainstorming of must-have and nice-to-have features in a desired new system

• Coordinated a vendor presentation which specifically addressed company requirements.

• Negotiated terms which guaranteed that current system issues would be addressed before committing to system upgrades or additional purchases.

2. Recommended a series of network infrastructure upgrades which would provide:

• More reliable nightly transfer of critical performance and sales data from restaurants to corporate office.

• Expanded access to company data by restaurant managers, including email communications, company sales data and industry information.

• Fast, reliable connection to the internet which paths the way for the company to integrate credit card transactions into their register system and greatly increase speed of Service.

Results: Reexamining the company’s current POS system saved them almost $50,000 in new system expense. Taking time at the beginning of the process to develop and document their specific business requirements and objectives allowed them to focus vendor negotiations on THEIR needs and objectives. It also allowed them to focus their energy on specific software issues that were obstacles to success. Finally, in a corporate culture that often saw projects come and go without successful completion, the leadership team’s commitment to tackling this initiative and seeing it through to successful implementation helped restore the confidence of employees in their process improvement capabilities.

Managing Customers and Prospects

Worked with a healthcare disease management company to improve the way the sales and account management departments track their prospect and customer pipeline. In this fast growing business, the sales cycle was getting longer and longer as the demands and expectations of potential customers increased. Account Managers needed a better way to collect, retrieve, share and correlate data about their current prospects and data.

Their current process was centered on an Excel Database that was constantly becoming corrupted with bad or inaccurate data. Additionally, account managers and sales staff had little access to the data while they were on the road, and had to rely on support staff to relay information to them, which was both time-consuming and limiting.

Approach: HBT conducted an assessment of business needs and objectives, then led a search for a Customer Relationship Management system that would meet both their current and future needs.

Recommendations:

• Be accessible to staff both in the office and remotely

• Integrate with reporting systems to give management real time information about the sales cycle and prospects.

• Provide proactive prompts to sales and AM staff with regard to key reminders or steps in the sales process.

• The system also needed to automate a very time-consuming direct mailing process.

Results: Once the software (Goldmine) was selected, HBT worked with both the customer and the development team to customize a solution which met each of business requirements defined above, while staying within the established project budget. Close project management and scope control ensured that unnecessary elements would not ‘creep’ back into the customization process and added unwanted complexity and expense. HBT also worked with the users to provide training during initial rollout.

Getting Managers at a Piano Company on the Same Sheet of Music

Senior Management from a major piano retailer came to HBT to improve their critical sales reporting processes. These sales and performance reports were critical to the ability of senior management to be able to make key business decisions in a timely manner. Recent company growth had slowed their current processes to the point that several current reports were taking several hours to complete.

Approach: HBT conducted an initial assessment of company technologies (software and infrastructure) as well as business objectives. In conducting this assessment, HBT realized that the current technology infrastructure, which was a relic from the company’s former days as a much smaller company, would not adequately support the company’s growth plans nor the increased demand/load that a new reporting system would place on it. HBT recommended that the company should first seek to upgrade current network technologies.

As this would be an expensive endeavor, HBT first helped to create the company’s first Technology Road Map, a strategic technology plan which documented existing company sales and performance objectives, and ways in which the proposed technology enhancements could help achieve these increases.

Benefits of the plan included:

• It allowed the company to establish a three-year plan for enhancements that ensured that from a financial perspective, the company established an affordable plan for completing the entire process.

• It tied technology initiatives to specific business objectives, and established metrics for ensuring that the enhancements achieved the desired benefits.

• It looked at each of the segments of the plan comprehensively. How were changes within the reporting system, communications systems and network related?

Company ownership traditionally had a very critical (and usually negative) view of any proposals for enhanced technology. Allowing him to see the total costs, timelines and benefits of the plan up front, however, made it easier to him to recognize the benefit of the plan, budget for and approve it.

Results: The company’s new infrastructure not only allowed sales associates far greater and faster access to company data, sales results and even Internet email (they were previously limited to in-house email only), it did so at a lower monthly support cost than the previous network. Sales associates were able to greatly increase their sales effectiveness by providing timely information to customers, responding to customer requests in a timely manner and keeping prospects up to date with email communiqués.

In addition, the new reporting platform gave managers faster and more automated access to critical performance data. Managers were able to analyze sales reports online by ‘drilling down’ through key exception reports to find the source of data anomalies or poor performance in minutes rather than hours. This freed support staff to concentrate on more mission critical functions. The new reporting system also automated the reporting of remote ‘special events,’ allowing senior management to concentrate on customer issues rather than data collection. The first event using this new process produced record sales results.