Attendance & Access Control has become an essential means of ensuring both security and tracking employees’ attendance in an organization. So, the main objective of an Access Control is to protect physical, IP & human assets. This avoids unauthorized people from visiting certain predefined areas. An ideal Access Control should effectively manage the security and employee attendance irrespective of the size of the organization.

ACCESS CONTROL ADVANTAGES

1. Access offered per user, time and area.

2. Collection of biometrical data for advanced security.

3. The option of additional protection for sensitive areas by means of Advance Security Options.

4. Reliability & Scalability through IP based architecture.

5. Control of multiple devices & locations via central monitoring.

6. Ability to integrate with firefighting & other technical security systems.

Employee Time management is necessary for ensuring the organization continues to maintain a high level of discipline and stays on the right course. Keeping the time – attendance in view, an organization should be careful while choosing a biometric. One should look for the following attributes:

1. Simultaneous control over multiple locations through a centralized system.

2. Management of working hours of Individual employees.

3. Tracking shift & overtime work.

4. Prompt notifications in case of any change say schedule.

5. Creating customized reports.

6. Easy integration with payroll management & human resources management.

Brick and Mortar business has its own set of prerogatives over online business. But there are certain areas where it significantly falls behind. One of them being the ability to measure the footfall or traffic to a store or an outlet especially supermarkets or retail stores. Online businesses have ways to gauge the traffic coming to the website, deriving business intelligence and accordingly making decisions. But does a brick & mortar business like a supermarket have means to measure their footfall and use it in the same way. The answer is YES or Footfall Intelligence Solution!

Footfall Intelligence enables a brick and mortar business to count its footfall and derive a variety of business intelligence. The best shall provide the following:

1. Best in Class Technology

2. Consistent Data

3. Data Intelligence

4. Quality Service

Best in Class Technology

Effective, error-free technology is a must for the success of a people counting system. The information derived is crucial for making important strategic & operational decisions. Thus, one must go with a solution provider with extensive clientele and proven examples.

Consistent Data

Consistency and uniqueness of data are necessary for ensuring it can be used in a meaningful way. Look for a solution provider who daily checks the data for discrepancies, thus transmitting high-quality unique data only.

Data Intelligence

Now comes the way data get churned to become fathomable & useful. The solution must come with an extensive dashboard enabling all kinds of quantitative and qualitative measurements say footfall quantity, red-zones and so on in the form of extensive reports. The reports' interpretation should thus lead to better store optimization or staff performance or an overall increase in ROI.

Quality Service

This is equally important to guarantee the continuous functionality and optimal health of the solution. Choose a solution provider that offers a comprehensive Service level agreement.

To conclude, this is the age of Big Data. Today data is being used in retail to enhance the customer’s shopping experience and strategically place the products that maximize the sales. Footfall Intelligence Solution thus is critical for gather data and interpreting it in a meaningful intelligent way.  

Businesses today have been evolving faster than ever. The way new technologies are being invented and incorporated, to make business operations efficient, is truly fascinating! The business world is becoming more comfortable with the idea of work from home and unified communication solutions are making this possible.

Unified Communication or UC defines how we connect different communication systems together and use them for collaboration. It thus ensures the smooth integration of a globally dispersed workforce.  It breaks down the barriers of distance and enables work no matter where your team is placed in the world.

The team accesses a secure system equipped with:

1. SMS & IM

2. Email

3. Voicemail

4. Scheduling Meetings

5. VOIP & Video Calling

6. Web Conferencing

7. Screen & Document Sharing

Now, Unified Communication comes with its gamut of benefits which can briefly be listed as under:

1. Greater Productivity

As the team can connect or stay connected irrespective of where they are.

2. Stronger Performance

Given employees can connect in an instant and thus resolve issues in a much quicker time.

3. Lower Costs

Businesses can shift away from a Capex model to an OpEx strategy with fewer initial expenses as UC operates on the cloud.

4. Better User Experience

Since employees can work from any place of their choice which gives them freedom of movement and hence better user experience.

The UC systems are rising in popularity year on year. The biggest trend propelling the adoption of UC is digital transformation (DX) and the emergence of the digital workforce. Now, the digital workforce centrally is based on the idea that people should have access to tools they need to perform irrespective of where they’re or what device they use. Combine this with the popular movement to cloud communications and agile methodologies, you get an environment primed for UC!

Kitchen Display System (KDS) is a revolutionary product that has paved a digital way to communicate directly with a restaurant’s Kitchen section replacing the handwritten or printed ticket orders. The KDS connects with the point of sale machine only if it’s compatible with it. And the choice of KDS generally depends on the choice of POS used.

The best is the one that integrates seamlessly with the front of house management, comes with flexible hardware options, conveniently sends guest orders directly to the kitchen, provides coursing & timing and such information that makes kitchen operations more efficient.

KDS is a must-have product for any restaurant to stay up to speed with the growing demands of customers. It makes the life of the head chef way easier and allows the focus to be shifted onto what’s the most important activity in the restaurant i.e. cooking delicious meals.

Coming to the basic features of KDS, it shall possess the following:

1. Meal Coursing / Coursing Manager

This simply involves sending different items of a course together at once for preparation and the coursing manager overlooks this. You can set certain rules to display items of a meal and thus determine the chronology of delivering them to the customer. This can ensure all parts of a meal are served fresh.

2. Meal Pacing

This has to do with delivering the entire meal hot and fresh. So, accordingly different parts of a meal are timed or paced. Each cooking station is thus notified to prepare its part of the meal to ensure the meal is served fresh.

3. Cook Times

This signifies when a particular part of the meal needs to be cooked. The aim is to prepare food with long and short cook time in such a way that the entire meal is served once or follows a proper hierarchy.

4. Recipes / Ingredients

This is for staff to double-check recipes, preparation procedures and maintain quality control.

5. Routing Capabilities

The purpose is to move the food to correct relevant destinations say grill, pantry, fryer and so on.

Speaking of benefits of KDS, few are as under:

1. Environment-Friendly

 Since it’s paperless.

2. Amplifies Efficiency

Orders are immediately sent to the kitchen and prepared in a much-organized manner which exponentially enhances the overall efficiency.

3. Order Tracking

Monitor the order cycle and use color code to imply if the part of an order is on time, running late, being prepared and so on.

4. Reduce Cost

The saving through KDS is visible only after a bit of time. However, the saving is immediate as far as order accuracy goes.

5. Business Intelligence

One can derive valuable data that can be used to further improve overall kitchen operations.

6. Integrated Online Ordering

The order received online directly appear on a KDS and doesn’t require the staff to intervene to reenter it into the POS system.

Information Technology Infrastructure is basically a set of Information technology components that forms the basis of IT as a service. Though it typically comprises of physical components such as computer and networking hardware, different shades of software and network components come under this umbrella.

The ultimate aim of a solid IT Infrastructure is to ensure smooth business functioning & sustainability. With the kind of technological upheaval we are witnessing, the IT specialists in various industries are paying special attention to the scalability of the IT infrastructure in place. Say if we talk about Data Centers, more organizations are moving to cloud from physical ones as it’s easier to manage and scale.

Coming to the components of IT Infrastructure, the primary ones are the physical systems such as hardware, storage, any routers or switches, network, software and so on. Then there’s a need for IT Infrastructure Security to keep the network and its components secure for maintaining the sustainability of the organizational system.  

Speaking of the future, here are a few ways of making the company IT infrastructure future-ready:

1. Move To Cloud

 A hybrid cloud is an option that has the best of both the worlds and the transition shall further facilitate the team collaboration and encourage agile development. The movement to the cloud also enables the prospects of scalability and business expansion.

2. Prepare For AI

AI is the topic of obsession in the technological world currently and increasing number of organizations are taking advantage of Deep learning, Machine learning & AI to bring added business value.

3. Deriving Useful Insights From Data

A business that harnesses the power of Data always has a competitive advantage. A spectrum of storage portfolio certainly assists in distilling the data and helps gather actionable insight from it.

4. Rethink Your Storage Options

Storage is more than having big external hard disks. It has to do more with reading the data that one acquires from it and then uses it for optimization. One can contemplate on multiple options and choose based on the nature of business. A company can go with a solo solution or mix of Flash Storage, Software-Defined Storage, Hybrid Storage, and Tape Storage.

5. Secure Your Valuable Data

This is important and encrypting the data is the way forward to ensure security and protection.

Enterprise Resource Planning is a centralized system that allows tight integration between different departments of an organization & enables them to work as one. ERP system tracks business resources such as cash, raw material, payroll, order, purchase & so on and facilitates the information sharing between different departments such as HR, Sales, Accounting, Purchase etc.

There are a number of ERP software programs efficiently designed to tackle the demanding everyday operational needs of a business. Among them, the one to reckon with is Praxis ERP.

Praxis ERP is designed specifically to cater to Hospitality & Retail. Developed with the best industry practices, it’s scalable to meet the evolving demands of the business. Here are the key benefits

1. Replaces Multiple Systems as One Scalable ERP Solution 2. Eradicates Interface Issues 3. Lower Vendor Maintanenace Fee & Server Storage Cost 4. Delivers Quick Return on Investment

STANDOUT FEATURES

1. Multiple Location Control 2. User-Friendly Interface 3. Modular Design 4. Universal Standard of Design & Coding 5. Highest Security 6. Fully Integrable with POS Solution

COVERAGE

1. Integration With POS     2. Financial Management System 3. HR Management System 4. Fixed Assets 5. Employee Self Services 6. Financial Budgeting System 7. Manpower Budget

INTEGRATION WITH POS  

This module is designed to integrate the Sales System of a POS with the Financial System. The Functions are as follows:

a. Import of Sales and Collection information from POS Software as per the defined schedules. b. Generation of extended reports related to sales and collection.

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The Financial and Accounting System are tweakable to meet the needs of a customer. Following are the major modules here:

Chart of Account-It entails features to setup organization structure, company, subsidiary company, cost center, units and income expense groups. Further, the nominal accounts enable to maintain five levels of account details.

General Ledger-General Ledger allows a user to input Journal Vouchers in the system. A user can also read data from other integrated modules such as Payroll, Accrued EOS, Vacations and Food Cost. Then one can generate vouchers for Accrued Expense / Accrued Income or use Period Control to close financial month and year. Batch generation of monthly reports in pdf is also available which saves time.

Accounts Payable-Account payable offers functionality to maintain complete payable sub-ledgers information. It’s integrated with the Material Management System (MMS) to book the supplier invoices using material receiving from inventory and includes posing of all MMS transactions to financials

Accounts Receivable-Account Receivable is used to maintain complete receivable sub-ledgers information. Customer ledger, statements, aging, and other reports can be generated.

Cash Management-The module deals with Bank & Cash related transactions entailing customer receipts, cash receipts, daily sales receipts (integrated with POS sales system), supplier payments and GL to GL Payments. 

Reporting-Comprehensive reporting is available to meet the business intelligence demands of users on different levels.

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

HRMS module is coded considering the local and customized requirements of Multiple Markets. Following modules are included in HRMS:

Employee Personal-Employee Personal system is for maintaining Employee Related Information including Employee Personal Information, Government Documents, Education/Experience, Dependents, Administrative and Employee Assets. A robust reporting module is available to generate admin and legal reports.

Leave Management-Employee leave Module provides facilitates maintenance of Employee Vacation Information including employee travel destination and ticket information.

Payroll- Payroll Module maintains employee salaries data with a full cycle of payroll generation. The major processes include earning entitlements, due deduction, loans GOSI module, monthly timesheets, and payroll generation.

FIXED ASSETS

The system offers a complete module with Asset Tracking System. It allows a company to maintain asset information and capacitates it to classify Asset-based different factors such as Asset Types, Categories, Physical Location, and Integration with GL Chart. The System can generate and post depreciation on an actual basis.

FINANCIAL BUDGETING SYSTEM

Budget System provides a forecast of revenues and expenditures i.e. enables the construction of a financial model depicting the business performance if certain strategies, events, and plans are carried out. It's efficient in the following ways: a. Ascertain the difference between the actual & the forecasted business trajectory by comparing actual financial operations against the forecast.  b. Maintain monthly financial budget on multiple levels such as cost center, department/unit, and nominal account.

MANPOWER BUDGET

The payroll system has the capability to maintain manpower budget based on departments and positions. Here are a few pointers on the significance: 1. Manning Charts 2. Retention Support Scheme 3. Learning & Development 4. Downsizing 5. Succession Planning

Automation! The very word has fascinated us and continues to mesmerize with the spectrum of possibilities. Every Industry seeks automation that can lead to enhanced customer experience. And the restaurants have found their answer in the form of Self Ordering Kiosk.

Self-Ordering Kiosk is a piece of technology that allows customers to order and pay on their own. So the entire hassle of standing in a queue, if there is one, is circumvented. On top of that, the kiosk has an interactive screen that is ideal for running promotions or upselling.

Coming to the architecture of the Self-Ordering Kiosk, it consists of an interactive screen encased in a robust case, a scanner, a printer and finally a payment module. The customer journey is pretty simple.

The journey involves customers taking a series of easy steps to place an order followed by making the payment on the kiosk. A payment receipt is printed along with the order number. The customer can then simply present the order number at the counter to collect the order. The interactive screen also offers a perfect medium to run a number of promotions for enticing customers or upselling an offer while they are placing an order.

Talking about the kiosk software, it shall possess the following must-have features:

Single App & Multi App Modes, Web-based Kiosk Lockdown, Control Peripheral Function; Access to Enterprise App Store; Custom Branding; Remote View & Control; Lock, Swipe, Shutdown & Restart over-the-air; and so on.

Self-Ordering Kiosk has been immensely successful & popular in fast food chains like McDonalds & KFC. And its popularity among customers is also on the rise. More restaurants are opening up to the idea of placing the kiosk at a strategic position on the premises. The self-service kiosk market is expected to reach an estimated $30.8 billion by 2024, as per new research from Tillster, which surveyed 2,000 QSR and fast-casual customers with the assistance of SSI.

The self-ordering kiosk is an evolving technology and is expected to bring more functionality onboard. So, there eventual dominance in the restaurant vertical especially QSR is eventual.