How Fast Is Your Company Really?
The Scalability Gap of Relying on Legacy Technology
With ‘fast’ everything nowadays: fast food, fast casual, fast fine, fast fashion, it’s enough to make your head spin...fast. But when you look under the hood (no pun intended), how fast does your company really move?
And by moving fast for your brick-and-mortar brand, I’m talking about comprehensive scalability: how many new stores can you open in a month and how quickly can you get new employees up and running, all while deepening your brand affinity and without sacrificing quality service to your customers?
Could you move faster, and if so, what’s holding you back?
These are questions I work tirelessly trying to answer every day for my clients and prospects, who typically sit on two ends of a spectrum (and growing pains):
Emerging brands pioneering a new space that fills a modern customer’s appetite (literally and figuratively), or
Large enterprises trying to reinvent themselves to more effectively compete with these disrupters
It makes a demonstrably positive impact to your revenue stream and “scalability compound factor” to be able to move faster.
For example, if you’re a newish fast casual concept that’s managed to consistently open 3 new stores a month for the past 24 months, you might think that’s impressive. However, what if you were to open 4, 6 or even 10 new stores a month? Let’s say you average $1M per year per unit, that’s an additional $250,000 of revenue lost by not opening an additional 3 stores in a month.
Also, by opening an additional 3 stores a month, you can then leverage a compounding approach to scaling, by diverting new found revenue into branding, marketing, employee benefits, real estate development, operations optimization, additional applications, etc. which will all provide a halo effect that positively impacts your employees, customers and staying ahead of or surpassing your competition.
You essentially make a stance in differentiating your brand by moving faster with quality, not slower, which will help to attract better talent, lead to enlightened hospitality and significantly improve your bottom line.
Seem impossible? What’s the issue? Why can’t brands scale faster without sacrificing quality service now?
Legacy technology holds you back
The old mentality was that you had to grow slow to maintain quality. That paradigm has shifted over the past few years and fast + quality can now work hand-in-hand because of new disruptive SaaS based technologies.
From where I sit in the marketplace, I see a definitive gap left by both emerging brands and established enterprises who have deployed older technology systems, and as the central nervous system to any brick-and-mortar retail chain, I’m frankly talking about antiquated point of sale systems.
From the horror stories I hear in the field, these items below seem to sum up the biggest pain points from which my prospects suffer:
It’s very expensive to deploy a legacy system
It’s complicated to learn and cumbersome for employees to use
It takes weeks to set up and train staff for a single NSO (new store opening)
Access to key data to make better business decisions is slow and painful
The ability to add on new best-of-breed applications is cut off, or ground to a halt
Legacy POS terminals are just flat out ugly
A better path to faster growth with quality
I’ll start by working backwards on the points above on how my team is positioning Revel Systems and our approach to modernize enterprise scalability in order to fix these problems:
1. Make aesthetics matter.
Nailing the right aesthetics for your concept has a two-fold benefit.
First, by minimizing your in-store and back office technology infrastructure, you position your brand more “cleanly” to scale faster. By replacing old outdated hardware and equipment with an iPad hybrid based system for instance, you cut your upfront costs in half and remove the unnecessary clutter.
You also future-proof your stores for updating technology on a more regular cycle that’s aligned with technology consumers are accustomed to. It’s likened to going on a 90 day exercise and nutrition program by conditioning your body and cleaning up your diet so that you can literally be more active, nimble and ensure longevity of your life.
Secondly, a key reason why our clients adopt Revel instead of a status quo system or another tablet based system is the fact that inviting Apple into your retail environment has a dramatically positive impact in enhancing your brand perception.
We have clients all over the world who specifically choose a solution that effectively aligns hardware with software to its fullest capacity. That’s distinctively an Apple approach. Other system philosophies lead to a disjointed and incoherent employee and customer user experience.
We’re very design-driven and focused, not just in creating a more modern software interface and user experience, but in deliberately creating stands for the iPads that highlight the beauty of the hardware. We do not cover the Apple logo or encase the iPad in something that downgrades or cheapens the look of your store.
Our prospects and clients have dedicated a tremendous amount of resources in ensuring every little detail of their concept is of the highest quality. No longer do they have to feel embarrassed or try to design ways to hide their bulky, eyesore-causing hardware at the point of sale, but actually now can make the system inter-woven or even front and center of the counter space design.
2. Unshackle the chains of a closed system to truly be flexible and nimble.
Before joining Revel, I worked with a consulting and IT outsourcing firm that had no products. The value provided was leveraging experience, industry relationships and support as a service built around best-of-breed systems that we brought together in a consolidated, cost-effective package for the client.
Needless to say, I was exposed to a lot of solutions in the marketplace. I worked with them all, legacy providers to new upstarts.
I wasn’t looking to leave the good position I was in, but once I engaged in a large project that forced me to dive deeper into the Revel product and talk to the team here, I was hooked. I saw a glimpse of the future of retail commerce and I had to be a part of it.
However, what has stayed with me is this consultative approach and obsession to building a best-of-breed tech stack for my clients. This is also woven into the ethos of Revel’s culture that we are not trying to be the best at everything, which leads to a master of none. We want to build the best point of sale solution in the world, full-stop. We’re dedicated to an open API and maintaining an agnostic approach, such as around payment processing and working with 3rd party applications.
To build the restaurant or retail chain of the future, it is vital to work within an open system that fosters flexibility in adding, removing or modifying your core in-store and back office tech stack. By locking yourself into a closed structure that is hard to modify, or takes way too long to integrate today’s best-in-class applications (whether it be online ordering, loyalty programs, employee management or an e-commerce platform for example), you’re doing a disservice to your brand’s ability to scale and differentiate itself.
Shouldn’t it be more aligned with today’s business practices to get that integration you need to move the business forward in 6-12 weeks, rather than 6-12 months? Or, isn’t better to leverage an open API that gets you the data you need to make smarter business decisions now, rather than tomorrow when it’s too late?
3. Operating in real-time was the norm in 2010. Now, it’s a must.
Managing big data is nothing new, but it’s certainly made a lot more challenging in a closed system or on a legacy platform that houses data only in the back office server of the store.
By deploying an open, cloud-based solution, you transform your company into a proactive participator rather than a reactive battler. Being just reactive to problems puts IT, Operations, Marketing and the C-Suite in perpetual tension. You never push forward, instead you spend valuable time and resources just fixing problems while your disrupters and competition pass you by.
The heart of your operation is access to good data, when and wherever you are. I was on a call last week with a team from one of the largest restaurant chains in the world who have recently launched their own fast casual brand with Revel.
They have deployed Revel with our point of sale terminals, self-service kiosks, line busters with an iPad Mini mobile order taker, a touchscreen kitchen display system and other services.
After going live, one of their favorite features from the executive team was our smartphone application that allowed them to see everything happening in the store in real-time, from hourly sales, to product mix, to inventory, to speed of service and more. This is the epitome of the “business of now.” Anything less, and you are operating in the stone ages.
4. What used to take you weeks, should take days and what took days, should be hours.
I remember in my old role working with our project management team having to line up resources 2-3 months in advance of a new store opening, having to schedule installers and trainers for weeks and several days in advance of the soft opening, and that was for just one store!
Charging clients for technical staff to stay on site for several days after opening, just to make sure everything’s working properly was the norm. Flights, food, hotel and professional service bills racked up. Sound familiar?
Looking back now, it seems like I was working in a different era. By implementing a system that’s light and easy to deploy, you cut your time and resources by over 85-90%. Instead of training staff on the POS for 4 days, it should take just an hour or two. Instead of being on site weeks in advance of opening, you should be able to plug and play the system just a day or two before.
This approach makes one of the biggest impacts into scaling quickly and opening more stores every month. It takes teamwork and a partner with a coherent approach.
The running joke when our team of 8 showed up 4 ½ days before the opening of last year’s Indy 500 where we were contracted to install over 220 terminals, is that the first question out of our client’s mouth was “where is everybody?” Needless to say, we turned Legends Hospitality’s apprehension into a long-term raving fan that has led to them using Revel for other high profile events like the most recent Super Bowl 50.
Or, when a large coffee chain out of Seattle gave our team a 30 day mandate to deploy almost 100 terminals across 46 locations, we did it in just 4 days with all of our own Client Success Managers and no outsourcing (where you can’t predict or control the user experience).
Revel has designed the new norm, again the “business of now,” which is how the most nimble, forward-thinking and profitable restaurant and retail concepts are operating.
5. Learning a new system should be easy, hell, even fun.
We are constantly told by our clients that with little to no training, their employees can learn the system on their own in less than 15 - 20 minutes.
Shouldn’t this be the standard of all modern software, so easy to use that you can learn it in little time, and actually like and want to use it more? Apple thinks so. We agree, and that’s why we are continually humbled by our explosive growthand fast rate of adoption.
In a side-by-side test with a legacy POS system, Revel was proven to speed up the total transaction time by 14%.
There are multiple factors that go into that, such as the customization of the front end for optimal menu flow and conversational ordering, the speed enhancement of an iPad connected to a payment peripheral, and more. However, a lot comes down to the ease of use and comfort by employees, because what they are accustomed to on their own smartphone or tablet, translates seamlessly over into their work life once they clock-in.
This reduces friction for your company. Less friction for the employee, means less time training, which leads to more autonomous, happier employees and lower labor costs and turnover, which ultimately helps your HR team to develop incentive plans to hire and retain better talent.
Post-implementation should also provide relief to your operations and support infrastructure and provide new opportunities to reallocate your internal resources. Our metrics suggest that deploying a modern iPad and cloud based hybrid solution helps to decrease your maintenance costs and support tickets by about 50% when transitioning from a legacy system.
Additionally, by tapping into the rich accessibility features of the iPad, all it takes now is a 3 finger swipe down on the screen, for instance, to submit a web ticket that gets addressed immediately, or you can better support and hire blind or visually-impaired employees with amazing new features that could never even be dreamed of with a legacy system.
6. Everything else in your life is a subscription, so why are you still living in 2007 with your POS software?
What started in business and now crossed over into our personal lives is the subscription to everything. It’s an inescapable nature to modern culture. We essentially subscribe to everything on-demand from movies, to music and evenour clothes.
However, I’m amazed by the amount of large enterprises still cut off at the limbs by being tied to legacy software and back office systems that offer no ability to upgrade easily or pivot on a dime. SaaS is sadly slow to be adopted by a lot of restaurant and retail chains.
For the larger enterprises, this plays a role in store closures, stagnate sales and being disrupted by more nimble players.
Fortunately, with the emergence of Revel, this is starting to change.
Where these large enterprises are succeeding is in developing niche concepts or pop-up stores where they can build that brand from scratch and even treat it like a startup. When they see how quickly and affordably they can scale and operate more efficiently, they then endeavor to roll up that approach within the parent brand, and with a smart implementation plan and a proven partner, deploying across the enterprise doesn’t have to disrupt operations or be a long drawn out process.
The shift from a CAPEX to an OPEX model is where the “business of now” is taking place, and even when the brand is cash rich, tremendous ROI is being realized over 3-5 years by adopting a subscription based model for three main reasons:
Software updates are more regular and help your brand stay in tune with what customers expect (Apple Pay, order ahead, on-demand delivery, etc.)
Hardware refreshes in shorter cycles are actually more cost effective with consumer/professional technology like the iPad, than trying to hold on to PC or Windows based systems for 5-7 years
Comprehensive cloud-based analytics help to cut back on unnecessary tools and bring a more cohesive approach to building your best-of-breed technology stack
On-Premise = An actual traditional legacy POS system quote. SaaS = a hardware + software as a service approach. Costs broken out for a single location with a 2 terminal system and full services.
Source: http://www.softwareadvice.com/tco/
I am on the Enterprise team with award-winning San Francisco based Revel Systems iPad POS, a select Apple Enterprise Mobility partner. I advise clients to implement a best-of-breed technology stack that will make a positive impact to their brand. Follow me on Twitter @BrandonTechExec and read more about Revel news here.#RevelUp!
