Benjamin Franklin said: “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.” These words have never been truer than when they describe the importance of data backup in the hospitality industry.

A restaurant continuously deals with a plethora of crucial information of financial and operational importance. In an establishment where dozens of transactions are recorded hourly, orders are placed frequently, loyalty programme details and recipes are regularly captured, things can go pear-shaped sooner than you think. The consequences of business continuity and financial losses you can incur can be mitigated by investing in off-site data backup.

Dangers of no data backup

As we move closer to becoming a paperless society, establishments that record information manually are increasingly becoming rare. This means that there are computers, laptops and Point of Sale (PoS) systems that house every kilobyte of essential information required to manage daily activities and more importantly, record transactions.

Human error, Mother Nature and even dreaded load shedding are factors that can seriously damage the hardware used to store this crucial data. Once the shock of the situation sets in, panic follows. The unfortunate answer is that once the information is lost due to a complete PC shutdown, an IT professional will have to charge you an exorbitant fee to retrieve lost data. But sadly, there’s no guarantee that all of it will be recovered.

A data backup plan is essential

Insurance is usually the first port of call to assure business continuity – ensuring that there’s financial backing to replace and repair assets if something goes wrong. Secure off-site data backup is the equivalent of buying insurance for one of your most valuable assets – information. In an environment where people are constantly accessing and changing information, a slip-up is bound to occur. Accidentally deleting an entire day’s transaction details, a flood or electrical surge damaging the PoS system and its server can bring operations to a startling and costly, halt. Reverting to the manual capturing of orders, correlating bills and recording information in the front- and back of house, leaves room for error and can slow down service delivery to patrons. This tarnishes your restaurant’s reputation.

Reap the benefits of business analytics

It’s clear that losing even a fraction of crucial information has a negative effect on the continuity of any establishment. Now imagine never having to worry about your information assets again and even using this information to better manage each establishment and increase profitability.

This is exactly what our PilotLive analytics solution can provide. By incorporating business intelligence with our intuitive PoS system, you have access to real-time operational and financial activities at all outlets from a central platform. This enables the accurate and forward-thinking management of assets, human capital and supplies to increase ROI.

Data as safe as houses

For greater peace of mind, we have partnered with data backup and recovery provider Irontree to offer you a complete data solution. Irontree’s data solutions are scalable to ensure that despite the size or future growth of the restaurant, your data needs will always be catered for. All information captured on our PoS systems is encrypted and stored safely on servers in the Irontree data centre.

If you have any questions on our solutions you can contact us or you can Download our brochure.

Author : Rudi Badenhorst

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data backup Pilot PoS software Restaurant restaurant industry