The Chinese Spring-Rolls Restaurant
Introduction
In the world on the verge of moving to the 21st century, everything needs to be changed for the better. Businesses need to be always on the cutting edge. And as modern technology is there to help it, it is never left behind. Modern management strategies are constantly being developed, as well as technologies that aid these advancements.
The management of the Chinese Spring Rolls Restaurant, after seeing that their business is fast gaining popularity, invested for itself a database that would help it efficiently manage itself ad hopefully help increase profits too. The following segment is taken from the reference material. It may provide a better introduction onto why the restaurant employed the aid of the database.
“After rave reviews in the local press regarding its ‘Prawn Ball & Noodles’ speciality dish the Spring Roll Chinese Restaurant has decided to implement a database to help organise itself and increase efficiency and hopefully profits. The restaurant offers a wide range of Chinese dishes, which are prepared on the premises from the finest ingredients stored in its stock room. There is a need to regularly order fresh stock from a number of selected suppliers. The database is required to record the items of stock and make sure that if items run low the system will automatically prompt the owners to place a new order, as well as keeping track of the payments for these orders.
The meals that the restaurant offers are also to be recorded as well the ingredients that go into making the dish. For example their speciality dish Prawn Ball and Noodles is made up of prawns, batter, noodles and their secret ingredient MSG. Some meals are set meals for 2, 3 or more customers and these are a collection of carefully selected individual meals. The main purpose of the database will of course be to record customers booking tables for particular nights. The restaurant has a number of stylish dinning areas with tables that seat a wide number of customers, from cosy couples to large parties of 15.
As part of the efficiency drive the restaurant want the database to be able to calculate how many customers they will have on any particular night and to make sure that there is enough staff working that night to serve everybody. So staff details and the days they are working must be recorded as well as their important contact details should they be needed on short notice. Finally, when the customers have arrived and selected their meals, the information is recorded into the database so the system can automatically calculate and produce an itemised bill. The consultant that got the contract to build their database was expected to produce a system that would provide answers to at least the following set of typical questions.
1. List all the meals and their individual ingredients both in alphabetical order.
2. List all the current orders which are outstanding, indicating the items on order and from which supplier, showing if the order has been paid for.
3. List by order of popularity the meals that have been selected since the restaurant started.
4. Produce a menu that shows all meals including set meals and their individual dishes.
In the above statement, we can see the purpose of the database. The database provides the solution to the questions stated above. In the following segments, we shall discuss the importance and significance of the database to the Chinese Spring Rolls Restaurant.
Discussion
Suitability of the application to the case scenario. As was mentioned above, the application was custom made for the establishment. It was designed to answer most of the needs that existed in the restaurant. The consultant had asked the designer of the database to address most of the queries of the restaurant management and to at least answer the following four basic questions: List all the meals and their individual ingredients both in alphabetical order.
List all the current orders which are outstanding, indicating the items on order and from which supplier, showing if the order has been paid for.
List by order of popularity the meals that have been selected since the restaurant started.
Produce a menu that shows all meals including set meals and their individual dishes.
And as the restaurant is getting busier and busier by the day, the application is well suited for its everyday undertakings.
Need for further development and / or improvements. As of the moment, the database is quite fitted for its use in the restaurant. Maybe in the near future, the restaurant may need to update its features to fit its growing needs. As of the moment, I see no need for improvement since it really well suited to its function. And since it helps in the management of the restaurant itself, further improvements can be put on hold, as of the moment.
Ease of use and need for training of staff in case of adoption of the application by the business. The application is very easy to navigate and manipulate. Indeed, the staff will need training on the application since it may be new to them. But since it is the age of computers and that most people nowadays are computer literate, it would be relatively easy for them to navigate and manipulate the database application, if in case, the management would wish to invest on it. It would not be a grave loss for the management if they invested on this application. Though maybe they would still need to give the staff a bit of training on the application, still, it would be greatly beneficial to them in the end since the application not only helps in the management of the restaurant, it makes it relatively easy.
Functions of the system that helps decision-making. Certain functions of the application really help in the difficult task of decision making. Since the application already weighs the needed ingredients for each type of recipe that the restaurant prepares, the management need only buy the ingredients needed from their trusted suppliers. This is a very good feature of the database. It saves the management the trouble of doing an inventory for its ingredients because the database already does that for them. The prices and the number of goods needed are already carefully calculated by the application. All the management needs to do is to program the application with the information about the goods that are needed and to update the information stored in the application.
Another good feature that helps in the decision making of the company is that the computer is pre programmed on the reservations and bookings of the clients. The management needs only to feed the information on the clients booking and the application will take care of the rest.
Functions that you would expect to be there but are missing. Since the application contains several functions that were really beneficial for the management, I was not really expecting anything else. But as I reviewed its general functions, a function that I was expecting was missing. It’s actually a very simple function that would aid the efficacy of the service and would help keep the anger of the waiting customer at bay. The management should at least have a timetable that has the estimated how long it took to process a certain dish. And they should have included that function in the application. It would have helped speed up the preparation of the food and the customers would at least know how long it took to prepare the dish they chose to order. And also, the management should brief their cooks to stick to the time frame estimated for each dish since the customers are waiting for the dish. If this is incorporated in the application and they provided a monitor for the cooks to refer to, there would be more efficient in serving their customers, not to mention the increased number of orders they could meet per day which would in turn increase their number of profits per day.
Recommendations
The application, in a whole, is very good in helping the efficacy drive of the management. But the training for each employee must be undertaken. Not only for the application itself but on all aspects that has any relation to the employee.
In the case of the Chinese Spring Rolls Restaurant, high vigilance must be adopted in order to attain a better and more efficient work force. The staff must be well equipped, not only in the aspects of efficiency in operating the system, but also in the overall performance of each employee. An automated tool provides a consistent, transparent method to record and review the agreed-upon standards and progress toward achievement. Improvement upon automation may not only provide results, employee-wise, but also regain and attain more profits.
According to a research paper that I came across, people are more driven when they are exposed to certain factors. ‘
“At the individual level, the performance management system (PMS) must drive employee engagement, focus, and alignment. People perform best when they:
Ø Understand and agree with what they are expected to achieve at work;
Ø Gain specific feedback and agree with others’ assessment of their progress based on objectives and relevant information; and
Ø Are encouraged to take responsibility for their own performance and plan their own development.
The company wants its employees to have control, choice, and self-help; but it also wants to make sure its employees’ contributions are aligned with business objectives. That is possible if employees have good, collaborative conversations with their managers.
One of the key strategies in any performance management implementation is to clarify, document, and train people on the company’s performance management process before selecting or implementing any tool.”
Furthermore, the staff is also asked to create more attainable and individual goals taken from the whole company’s objective. Having said this, it may help the overall performance of each employee since they can be treated as individual persons with personal goals rather than a staff working to create a very vague and large objective. Though of course it may seem very good to have objectives which can be easily pursued, it may not be as the same for the staff. They may think it is humanly impossible to attain such Herculean tasks. The management should also think of how the employee can accomplish each task and if it is humanly attainable for them.
In addition to that, development and adaptation of technological innovations by the management is greatly encouraged since it will result in a better and more efficient service to the clients and also help create better managerial approach for the company itself. Moreover, acquiring such an application can help in keeping an edge over other competing businesses.
Conclusions
Therefore, the application that the management decided to acquire is greatly beneficial. Also, in the near future, it may require a little tweaking here and there. It may also need a bit of upgrading when the needs increase, but for the time being, the application is really very good at meeting the demands of the management.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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