IDine: A Sophisticated Information System For Vallée De Goût Restaurant

Overview of Vallée de Goût’s Business and Service Challenges

Vallée de Goût is a French Cuisine that has been growing with steady rate due to the contemporary fine dining and luxurious comfort at their restaurant. The quality standard can be rated high however, the handling of overcrowded customers during weekends are not being managed by the restaurant due to several human errors. Introduction of a sophisticated Information System namely ‘iDine’ will allow the organization in coping up with these problems and assuring the fulfillment of the customer needs and quality services. The customer service quality is always considerable and influencing in the field of the hospitality sector considering the delivery and management of best customer service quality. The purpose of this project is to maintain the customer service quality and allow the consumers to avail the best services through the application of the information system in an efficient way. This information system will be integrated in the tablet, big screens for the cook, accountant, and head of the waiters. It will allow the real-time data and information exchange including from order collection from the consumers to the stock or inventory management.  

Following is the list of the system capabilities that can boost the ways in which the services could be delivered to the consumers:

The primary benefit of the system will be that it can be easily incorporated within the mobile device and screens of the restaurant that can allow the waiters, cook, supplier, inventory and others to be associated with each other. The tabletop laptop will be introduced at every table of the restaurant and thus, users can place their order after selecting the wide range of the available foods and beverages. It will eliminate the waiting for the waiters and will allow the customers to make an order right they enter the restaurant. A plan B system for the users who do not want to use the tablet can connect to the head waiter through making call.

The information is then accessed by the cook where he or she confirms the food and start preparing. Thus, the time being consumed by the waiter for taking orders, writing them and informing cook is eliminated and the food is being prepared. After cooking food, the cook updates in the screen that the food is cooked and same information will be cascaded to the users and the head waiter. The head waiter will ask the waiter to take the order to the respective table.

The flexibility in order can be accomplished as the system will allow to modify the order or add additional items at any time and inform directly to the management of the restaurants.

Other than customer satisfaction, this system also emphasizes on improving the inventory management and stock availability for the restaurant. The calculation being provided by the head chef is used for calculating the availability of the stocks and orders being made and informing the manager according for further stock and supplies.

Furthermore, the sales analytics will be helpful and effective in predicting the future needs and requirements of the restaurant in manner to develop the strategies those could possibly helpful and effective in improving decision-making.

Development of iDine Information System

Customers feedback is being introduced that can alternatively boost the results and analysis of the business analytics and allow the restaurant to develop the new strategies that can meet the customers’ expectations.

Real time space availability and real time information being exchanged throughout the dining process is shared with the customers, management and staffs that can improve the entire business activity.

Real time data management related to the ongoing process including ordering, cooking, serving, billing, inventory management, and feedback for the users can be highly efficient in improving the decision-making that can meet the consumers’ needs and requirements. The overall revenue of the business can be improved as the new and old customers will have the same enhanced and improved services that can gain their loyalty. The customer service quality can be enhanced to the exceptional level through assuring the availability of all the products and services. For instance, if there’s not any availability of food the real time information can be shared with the customers at their table through representing it besides the menu and hence, improving the strategies for the cuisine.

The human resources required for the deployment of this system includes the following:

Project manager, who will be managing and delivering the entire project activities under his or her guidance.

Business analyst (whose role has been already accomplished other than the RSS documentation)

Market analyst, who will analyze the market status and the approaches being made by the competitors and introduce them to the management for modifying the strategies accordingly.

Software engineer, who will be developing the iDine information system

IT specialists, who will be interconnecting all the devices and touch screens within the cuisine.

Sponsors, who will be providing necessary funds to the project

Technical resources required includes the tablets with at least 1.3 GHz processor and 2 GB RAM with a screen size of 9.7 to 12.9 inches. Touch screens for the accountant, cook, and head waiter. Wired connectivity between these devices and an automated function that will be connected to the suppliers for providing supplies through adding trigger of the threshold value. iDine information system that is connected to the single database of the cuisine considering the management of the above-mentioned operational activities.

	Internal	External
Operation	1. Customers 2. Cook 3. Waiter 4. Cuisine Manager	1. Sydney Authority 2. Society or Community 3. Partners 4. Suppliers
Executive	1. Cuisine Owner 2. Information System Developer 3. Committee Members	1. Sponsors 2. Shareholders

Rating: 1 to 5 considering very low to very high

Sl no.	Risk	Probability	Impact	Severity
1.	Interdepartmental Coordination	4	3	12
2.	Individual Support	5	2	10
3.	Organizational Support	3	3	9
4.	Timeframes and Scheduling	4	4	16
5.	Lack of a Strategic/Formal Plan	2	3	6
6.	Fiscal/Budgeting Issues	5	4	20
7.	Organizational Directives	3	3	9
8.	Organizational Culture	4	4	16
9.	Politics, Internal/External	5	5	25
10.	Rapidly Changing Technology	3	4	12
11.	External Consultants	5	5	25
12.	Existing Systems	5	4	20
13.	Standardization Issues	4	3	12
14.	Compatibility Issues	3	3	9
15.	Organizational IT Expertise	4	2	8
16.	Individual IT Expertise	3	3	9
17.	Internal Leadership	4	4	16
18.	Personnel Issues	2	3	6
19.	Adequate Staffing	2	4	8
20.	Resistance to Change	5	5	25
21.	Training	5	5	25

The proposed system will allow flexibility in the system with an efficient and effective management of all the operational activities those could be highly efficient and effective regarding the revenue of the cuisines and customer service quality. The old customers’ loyalty can be managed and maintained in highly efficient and effective way. Business is all about increasing the customers frequency and enhancing the revenue. This will smoothen the entire functioning and operating of the Cuisine through allowing to improve the decision-making best on the real time data. It will meet the needs and requirements of the customers in addition to meeting the satisfaction level of the customers. The risks in the implementation can be high as mentioned in the above section however, the possible benefits are the brighter reason behind the successful delivery of the project. The first section introduces the possible operation those could be delivered through the introduction of this information system and hence, those could also be related to the final outcome and benefit of the system being introduced to them.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that the information system can change the face of the ways in which the Cuisine is managing the operational activities including from food ordering to the inventory management. The system can allow the easy and effective management of all the operational activities through collecting and processing the data collected during the food ordering instance. The customer satisfaction level can be improvised through the adoption of the information system within the existing system of the restaurant. Moreover, replacing the existing system with iDine can be profitable for the restaurant in all the ways. It can be recommended to implement secured payment system in the iDine information system as it will eliminate the only process that is being delivered from the counter and thus, entire operational activities can be managed and delivered in an efficient and effective way. The business analytic approach being introduced in the system can be highly efficient and effective in predicting the future requirements for the cuisine and hence, development of the strategies targeting the customers likes and dislikes can be delivered in much efficient and effective way.

Abel, E. E., & Obeten, E. (2015). Restaurant Customer Self-Ordering System: A Solution to Reduce Customer/Guest Waiting Time at the Point of Sale. International Journal of Computer Applications, 111(11).

Chen, L. F., & Tsai, C. T. (2016). Data mining framework based on rough set theory to improve location selection decisions: A case study of a restaurant chain. Tourism Management, 53, 197-206.

Howcroft, D. M., Klakow, D., & Demberg, V. (2017). The Extended SPaRKy Restaurant Corpus: designing a corpus with variable information density. Proc. Interspeech 2017, 3757-3761.

Kim, J., & Gambino, A. (2016). Do we trust the crowd or information system? Effects of personalization and bandwagon cues on users’ attitudes and behavioral intentions toward a restaurant recommendation website. Computers in Human Behavior, 65, 369-379.

Lee, A. S., Thomas, M., & Baskerville, R. L. (2015). Going back to basics in design science: from the information technology artifact to the information systems artifact. Information Systems Journal, 25(1), 5-21.

Li, X., Lv, Z., Zheng, Z., Zhong, C., Hijazi, I. H., & Cheng, S. (2017). Assessment of lively street network based on geographic information system and space syntax. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 76(17), 17801-17819.

Liu, X., Gao, J., He, X., Deng, L., Duh, K., & Wang, Y. Y. (2015). Representation learning using multi-task deep neural networks for semantic classification and information retrieval.

Tarigan, J., & Putri, F. E. (2015). The Usage of Accounting Information System in Hotel and Restaurant Management: An Evidence from Indonesia. Journal of Applied Business and Economics, 17(4), 105-117.

Widaningrum, D. L., Surjandari, I., & Arymurthy, A. M. (2018, April). Visualization of Fast Food Restaurant Location using Geographical Information System. In IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science (Vol. 145, No. 1, p. 012102). IOP Publishing.

Yang, F. X. (2017). Effects of restaurant satisfaction and knowledge sharing motivation on eWOM intentions: the moderating role of technology acceptance factors. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 41(1), 93-127.