November 2002

HOSPITALITY TECHNOLOGY
MISSON CRITICAL ASPS -- AS THE ASP MODEL GAINS ACCEPTANCE IN FOODSERVICE, OPERATORS RENT APPS AND BUILD PROFIT

Rick Bruns, Contributing Editor

It has been possible for some years now to use remotely hosted applications for virtually all functions in a restaurant, rather than acquiring the software and running it on one's own system. After a false start and pullback, operators are beginning to shift to the application service provider (ASP) model in significant numbers, but they have been cautious for good reasons. Reliability of internet connections, security of data, and longevity of the software vendor, to name a few. Still, even the boldest rarely rely on the ASP for everything

Micros (www.micros.com) is addressing the fear of losing the POS link to a remote server by designing systems that cache transaction data until the link is restored. DSL connections, which advertise their “always on-line” function, in fact have numerous brief interruptions. In response, Infogenesis (www.infogenesis.com) has partnered with Spacenet (www.spacenet.com) to provide a satellite connection.

The competition among software vendors is yielding more and better applications at seemingly affordable prices. Still each organization must analyze the total cost of converting to ASP.

Smart business solutions
In its latest release of the ASP-based Aloha Enterprise (www.alohapos.com), Aloha has developed a wizard for creating customized e-mail, pager and phone alerts for managers. Alerts can be based on any piece of data, such as hours worked by an employee to avoid overtime, or sales volume in a given period. The alert can be a text message using keywords that link to the remote database, such as: “Congratulations, lunchtime sales per server exceeded your goal.”

Mirus’ (www.mirus.com) ASP solution focuses on robust data-mining, data warehousing and store polling functionality. With Mirus Intelligence and Mirus Connect, executives can make customized reports on all aspects of operations with a recently improved user interface.

Avero (www.averoinc.com), formerly Restaurant Trade, is now offering Avero’s ASP-based Slingshot business-intelligence application pre-installed on all its North American installations. Slingshot integrates with multiple POS systems to convert existing data into Web-based reports and management analysis. The latest upgrade, released in February, has streamlined navigation, faster performance and additional reports. Slingshot, thanks to last year’s agreement with Squirrel Systems (www.squirrelsystems.com) is preloaded on all Squirrel Systems POS terminals sold in North America. Radiant Systems (www.radiantsystems.com) also offers an ASP-based Enterprise suite. Released earlier this year, Radiant 6e packages operations, workforce and supply chain management software. According to Radiant, operators moving to the ASP model are interested in conserving capital expense.

EatecNetX, the enterprise foodservice management solution from Eatec (www.eatec.com), manages the requisition, purchasing, receiving, production, inventory tracking, catering and suites management. Unit managers, customer service and business control staff utilize the sophisticated capabilities of EatecNetX.

Growing fast
ParTech (www.partech.com) says its ASP business is growing fast as customers embrace the company's hosting of its comprehensive iNsite enterprise software. Its customizable reports can be obtained not only on a conventional computer but also on a PDA. Providing a time-saver for managers who analyze store operations, Statability (www.statability.com) takes the data from the customer's system and processes it to be distilled into customizable reports on the familiar Microsoft Excel. With a refreshingly back-to-basics attitude, the reports are formatted to be printer-ready, because, according to the company on the cutting edge of the virtual-application world, most people still like to read reports on paper.

PixelPoint (www.pixelpointpos.com) Headoffice allows users to consolidate sales data at the corporate data warehouse, using secure communications via the Internet. Use PixelPoint's DataMiner to gather sales and other information from the chain stores for comparative analysis.

While some companies are waiting for increased demand for ASP-based POS solutions, others are already attaining success with ASP offerings. For example, Squirrel Systems’ Linux-based point-of-sale system is designed for easy modification and is ready for true ASP functionality when demand increases.

Micros and InfoGenesis, conversely, have already offered true ASP point-of-sale systems. Micros’ iPOS is part of the MyMicros.net ASP solution. In the event of Internet failure, the iPOS Offline Manager System ensures that the POS will continue to work until the connection
is restored.

To minimize concerns over e-Revelation, InfoGenesis offers a service-level agreement that guarantees an uptime percentage level, depending upon the method of connectivity. e-Revelation's off-line capabilities mean InfoGenesis delivers complete data viability even in the event of a connectivity failure.