Make your business more profitable and more competitive with enterprise EPOS technology

By implementing a complete EPOS solution into your pub or chain of pubs, you give yourself a huge advantage over your competition. Why? Because you streamline your operations which then allows you to increase productivity, improve efficiency and maximise profitability.

Using a series of integrated applications you control every element of your business at the touch of a button, making your establishments more productive overall. You can manage orders, prices, menu items and staff on a chain-wide basis, increasing the effectiveness of seasonal or promotional changes.

Introducing a system which organises front of house, kitchens, supply chain and labour is a must in an age where pubs are highly competitive. With an Enterprise Management solution you can support the requirement for chain operations to manage and control pub level databases for both EPOS and back office applications.

With a solution like MICROS' RES product, the Enterprise Management module provides chains with an enterprise-level management tool that enables their pubs to focus on operations and customer service, not database administration. Add menu items to implement a new promotion for one pub, a region, or the entire chain. Change pricing structures in response to local competitive pressures in key target markets. EM enables the HQ to easily manage pub level data to increase market share and maximize margins.

The future of enterprise EPOS technology

Where does the future lie for pub EPOS? Well like most things in this day and age, EPOS is heading for the Internet. With products such as MICROS' ‘mymicros.net' a content rich internet portal; pub management can now access hosted applications for electronic point-of-sale, back office, data warehousing, business intelligence and other business applications and content creating the next-generation model of pub enterprise systems.

mymicros.net offers outstanding benefits to both independent and chain pub operations. Independent pub owners and chain operators can experience a freedom they have never had before. Using this Internet technology, they have access to their operations' real-time data from a Web browser - any time and anywhere. They can make adjustments to pricing, menu items, or inventory from across the street or across the country - all they'll need to do is log onto the Web.

Sitting on top of the mymicros.net product is MICROS' iCare Solution which provides a suite of CRM modules that deliver a 360º view of your customer's activities. This allows pub chains and independent pubs to communicate with prospective new customers and stay connected to existing regulars. By creating mailing lists you can then support permission based email campaigns to prospects and customers about events, offers and promotions. If you accompany this solution with a ‘gift card' scheme, you can reward your regulars at the same time by setting up a loyalty programme, all of which is available with the MICROS iCare Solution.

Also integrated with mymicros.net is MICROS' MyInventory product which works with any EPOS system that is feeding data to the browser-based mymicros.net portal. Of all the cost components associated with back-office functions, inventory carries the greatest risk to a pub operator's long-term success. Inventories require cash to produce adequate stock levels, fixed assets to store them, and human capital to manage them. Even if a pub is enormously successful, bloated inventories could mean that cash is declining.

Steve Madden works for Micros Fidelio, providers of EPOS software for hotels, restaurants, pubs and bars.