Member Article

Technology is the key to business success

Gerry Skews understands the importance of technology. For nearly thirty years he worked in the life sciences industry before deciding that the skills and knowledge that he had acquired could be applied to a new business venture.

At the start of 2013 Skews began renovations on an old pub in the centre of Cambridge. Five months later he opened The Brunswick, a 40 cover, fine dining restaurant with private dining facilities, a beautiful beer garden and wide range of real ales, wine and spirits. There seemed no reason why the pub shouldn’t be a success. Nonetheless, The Brunswick was launched in tough market conditions: hospitality as an industry has been badly affected by the recession and chain restaurants and brewery-owned pubs are dominating the market.

With this in mind Skews made the decision to use his technology background to gain competitive advantage. He kitted out the restaurant with a range of cloud-based, integrated technologies that would provide him with comprehensive data and an overview of his business.

“What kills business is a lack of information, a lack of inter-operability,” explains Skews “With real-time, accurate data at your fingertips it’s much easier to anticipate major problems before they arise and react quickly.”

He decided one focus was his EPoS (Electronic Point of Sale) system. While Skews already had an EPoS system (installed at his other business), he found his supplier difficult to work with and unreliable. As such he set out to thoroughly review the market and choose a new provider. He had a long list of requirements: it needed to be cost-effective with good operability; it needed to integrate with the back office and payment system; and, most importantly, it needed to fit with the restaurant’s customer loyalty scheme.

Eventually Skews came across CardSave, a provider of payment technologies to small businesses. CardSave, he found, had recently teamed up with Casio, a provider of till systems, and together they were offering an affordable, benefit-driven EPoS solution which required no capital outlay and which offered the functionality he required. It seemed ideal.

Once the decision was made, the set-up was quick. The system was swiftly installed and the restaurant’s manager was given a complimentary day of training.

Skews comments: “It’s early days but we have a lot of plans in place for this technology. We plan to use it to gather sales information, to integrate it with our loyalty scheme, and even to send newsletters to our customers. There are a lot of opportunities. One of the most interesting features is the ability to monitor data on the system remotely via email – I send it a command and it responds with the required information.”

Another feature is stock alerts which help the restaurant’s management make proactive, as opposed to reactive, business decisions. “There are 72 pints of beer in a barrel and the terminal tells us when we hit 60. We then know it’s time to re-stock, and we don’t have to keep customers waiting when the barrel suddenly and unexpectedly runs dry,” explains Skews. “The hope is that the breweries will eventually use online technology as well - that way the message will pass straight from our EPoS to the brewery without the need for human intervention at all.”

There’s no denying that Skews and The Brunswick are ahead of the technology curve. Many small business owners are put off by the cost of EPoS systems – which typically retail at £3000+ - and find the need to analyse data daunting. Thankfully the CardSave system works on a rental scheme with a price of just £2.20 a day – meaning that there is absolutely no capital outlay – and the complimentary training means that no business should be concerned about an inability to understand and analyse company data.

Business data is something that Skews is very passionate about. “Data exists and is used by small businesses in other industries, but not in this one where it could solve a lot of problems.

“Having technology like this EPoS system and using it to gather business intelligence makes it possible for small and independent companies like mine to compete effectively with larger, fully integrated chains. We are up against large organisations, with multiple outlets, that can buy and assimilate information with ease. This allows them to be accurate in a way that small businesses can’t. They can respond to market demands and can customise their branches accordingly. This makes it exceptionally difficult to exist and thrive as an independent business. I truly believe that we need technology like this in order to compete.”

With the CardSave/Casio EPoS terminal and card terminal, Skews has given his business a fighting chance.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clive Kahn .