The catering industry has changed fundamentally over the last couple of years as businesses today experience a significant problem of keeping up with ever-changing consumer behavior.
In the contemporary, digital world, convenience is more important than ever. Traditional catering often involves lengthy, manual, and paper-based processes. With multiple channels of receiving orders, which do not talk to each other, management becomes a hassled job. Information is fragmented and available in silos which are rarely actionable. Costing is much complicated and poses a big challenge. A typical caterer is often indulged in handling other aspects of the business rather than being able to focus on the catering itself.
However, with the rise of modern technology, this industry is offered with an online catering software which can be leveraged to provide excellent customer service and enhance the customer experience. With all information available at a centralised place, it can prove to be an effective solution for addressing the issue of diminishing profits and elevated costs. It empowers businesses to automate processes and streamline operations by making use of an extensive range of features. It also helps in making informed decisions and improving communication with customers. Shattering away the age-old methods, catering software is the answer to many challenges faced by the businesses today. Here’s how catering software makes a caterer’s life easier.
Easier Management
Whether you are running your catering business from home or you are a large firm with multiple orders a month, better planning and management of orders and deliveries is the key to the success of your operation. The age-old custom of maintaining spreadsheets for orders and deliveries is cumbersome and can be very time consuming. Duplicating data for different team members and stakeholders can delay the process and is prone to mistakes. Making use of a catering software here is the smarter way. This kind of an easy-to-use system provides a common platform for your team to collaborate and access the business details from a centralised place. It lets you tailor menus with ease which gives your customers more choice. It enables you to manage all your orders from a simple and upfront dashboard thus providing a broader picture of your business as well.
Utilising the capabilities of a modern catering software can really empower business and lets you focus on the right aspects of enhancing customer experience. With rich capabilities such as order tracking, custom reporting, and payment processing it lets the caterer do more of the catering and less of the paperwork.
Caterer-Customer Relationship
Previously, caterers used to take orders via phone calls or emails hindering the process of developing relationships with their customers. Good customer service can get more loyal customers in catering than delicious food alone. Caterer-Customer Relationship is vital for a better understanding of the customer’s requirements and changing the product as per need. New age catering software understands the importance of customer satisfaction and provides a platform wherein a caterer can get insights into customer’s information on past orders, changes in orders, and payments. Tracking alterations in orders as they happen ensures prompt actions. Adding notes and delivery instructions that are visible to all team members enable timely and well organised delivery of the product. By tracking sales history, caterers can also prepare for supplies and plan for deliveries in advance.
Valuable and Actionable Insights
Manually managing production and delivery logs can be a tiresome process for any catering business and a modern catering software understands this problem. A typical catering management system provides a comprehensive analysis of data that is imperative to make informed decisions. Detailed and to-the-point analytics helps caterers gather the information required for effective execution.
Catering software also allows you to build custom reports tailored to your needs that cut down manual effort and save hours of work. These reports can be generated when you need them and can be exported in various kinds of formats for sharing. This ensures that you get the desired accuracy needed to evaluate the processes you’ve put in place for your organisation. These systems also manage schedules, logs, and other statistics so that you can focus on what matters the most – catering.
Flexibility and Seamless Integration
Whether you are a small catering business or a large corporate, catering software today provides flexibility to tune and customise them according to your requirements. This helps you run your business with enhanced efficiency and productivity. With cloud-based offerings and pay-as-you-go model, it makes it easy for SMEs to onboard and corporates to scale. For example, if you are starting your bakery from home with limited resources, you can always opt for only a specific module of a catering software that fits your needs. On the other hand, if you are a catering business that wants to expand its operations, you can always scale without worrying about the hassle of setup and without spending your catering-earned money on upgrades, licenses, and hardware.
Modern catering software is designed for easy integration with other cloud-based Accounting Software, Payment Gateways, and Marketing Platforms. This reduces the manual effort of importing or migrating the data which results in improved accuracy for the valuable information. For example, if you are a large scale corporate catering operation and want to use your already existing accounting management system along with an online ordering tool, you can do so by harnessing the power of seamless integration provided by catering software and consider it as a one-stop-shop solution.
Eliminate the Middleman
The presence of an intermediary in the traditional catering business is nothing short of a real threat. There are many platforms available today that can be used to enhance the catering business but not all of them come without a cost. Many start-ups and third party food aggregators today provide services that may benefit the caterers but will leave a big hole in their pockets. Catering software on the other hand revolutionised the industry enabling caterers to pay only for the technology they use without any additional or hidden cost involved. By eliminating the threat of middlemen, caterers can empower their customers and get desirable results.
Handle Payments with Ease
If you are a home-based caterer and payment issues give you panic attacks, it’s time for you to relax. Catering software with its integrated payment processing capabilities empowers the caterers to handle payments from their customers without stress. While it empowers its customers to pay after delivery is done, catering software also enables the caterers to flag the defaulters. After successful payment, invoices are emailed directly to the customers and also synced with the accounting management system. Also, caterers can also track payments and amounts unpaid by the customers.
The paradigm of online catering software is rapidly evolving and catering businesses need to indulge as much in harnessing the power of technology as they do in preparing their catering and operations. By upgrading to a modern cloud-based catering software, caterers can reap rewards that can expand their business.
