Create a quick payment system with free WiFi and private cloud

Mitchells & Butlers (M&b) is a British restaurant and bar operator with more than 10 famous brands, such as the UK's famous bar All bar one, O ' Neill ' and harvester. M&b's CIO, Mike Sackman, says M&b has more than 1600 outlets in the UK, with more than 40,000 employees, with a turnover of 2 billion pounds a year and a sizeable market share in the UK's casual catering market. But M&b hopes to gain greater market share, and technical problems are a challenge to the business expansion plan.

Since being the CIO of the company in 2007, Sackman has established a technical team of 50 people at M&b's headquarters in Birmingham. Sackman's technical team is primarily responsible for m&b business transitions, technical strategy development, project delivery, and it operational services. Sackman's main task is to carry out a grand transformation project involving all aspects of the group's business, from modern sales models and interactive consumer services to employee scheduling tools, to a set of data management systems, and the system is based on a private cloud architecture.

At present, the establishment of mobile e-mail system, so that people rushing to the various business outlets can access the company's business data at any time, has let Sackman busy. In addition, companies are interacting with consumers on social networking sites such as Facebook, while their companies are operating harvester IPhone software.

In an interview with Silicon.com, Sackman said: "For me, the key point of enterprise It is that we are part of the overall strategy of the enterprise, not a passive response strategy." I'm not inclined to hire a large number of technical experts, but rather consider how to push M&b's business outlets to be more valuable. ”

"If you're a pure tech worker, there are a lot of tech companies that can go," he added, "And if you're the CIO of the enterprise, I think my job should be to influence the company's technical strategy, but don't forget to do the pure technical work you do." ”

Sackman is also very good at CIOs ' little magic, namely, through technological innovation, to reduce IT costs while increasing business benefits.

"My IT strategy is divided into two lines," he said. The first is to develop and publish a schedule of business changes, most of which depend on technological innovation, which, of course, is based on the principle of minimizing costs. ”

"Part of the change we are making is to reduce it operational costs, but with the automation and efficiency of new technology, this change can also help other departments reduce operating costs." I've got the gist of this, and even in the field of front-line sales in restaurants, there are some technical and business processes that can improve profitability. ”

"What we often use internally to remind ourselves is that we are here to change, not to install technology," Sackman added: "My role needs to face change and technology, so the biggest challenge I have is not technology, Instead, it determines the order of change and ensures that the changes brought about by new technologies generate enough return on investment. ”

Non-contact technology used in fast payment planning

According to CIO Sackman, customers in the face of M&b's business think that the first thing to improve is the speed of payment. The company first upgraded each store's hardware system, but did not stop there. Sackman said M&b was looking for suitable non-contact technology and would soon be applied to the bar-payment counter.

"Our payment will replace the current magnetic card reader at the bar, instead of a payment system that can support both non-contact reading devices and magnetic card readers," he said. "Since bar consumption is generally less than 15 pounds, non-contact devices are very useful for m&b bar outlets and are better than those used in restaurants," he said.

Sackman explained: "At the peak of the flow of the night, Go o ' Neill ' S or Nicholson ' s bar, the point of wine is to be queued, and contactless payment system can significantly increase the rate of payment for consumers, from our point of view, this increase in beverage sales, increase turnover, from the customer's point of view to shorten the waiting time. It is expected that in the next 6-12 months we will build the system at most of the bar. ”

In addition, in order to speed up the speed of payment, the company also launched a business line to upgrade the management model of the project, including order submission, table management and utilization, the purpose is to maximize the increase in restaurant turnover rate, so that consumers can quickly take a seat. Sackman said that the networked single system has been deployed to more than half of M&b's restaurants, but they still need to add a table management system to the order system to achieve the management of each table.

Next, Sackman's job is to add takeout orders to the networked single system, which is also critical, and helps to achieve one of the company's broad strategies, the consumer WiFi network.

Sackman explained: "In particular, positioning in the Metropolitan brand stores, to provide consumers Wi-Fi network will become the group's basic service strategy." I think free wifi will be the direction of the future, and the only question now is whether we should be free Wi-Fi at all times, or a free network for some time of day. The problem is currently being tried by different retailers and coffee shops. Soon we will find the final answer, but it is now certain that the methods used for different brands or stores should be different. ”

This is another consideration for Sackman, which is to ensure cost savings while not allowing technological innovations to adversely impact or cross the M&B's different operations. For example, some services located in all Bar one of the city, if used in suburban Toby Carvery, may not achieve the desired results.

"The biggest challenge we face is that we need to be more efficient at making changes to more than 1600 outlets, and the innovations are not exactly the same," he said. Our business is diverse, so my job is to ensure that innovative applications for different brands do not shrink or fail. ”

In the IT architecture, M&b has just signed an agreement with Fujitsu to transfer the group's data center and WAN operations from IBM to Fujitsu. "This is a big deal for us because it involves the system platform and network connectivity of more than 1600 stores, as well as the Office system platform and network connectivity of more than 10 subsidiaries," said Sackman. "This protocol is also based on a private cloud architecture to ensure optimal utilization of virtualization technologies and servers."

For M&b, the attraction of cloud computing is twofold: cost and flexibility. "This will greatly reduce our base cost and increase the flexibility we need to expand our business," Sackman explained. Since the group plans to add a few more outlets soon, it cost control and flexibility is very important. He added: "What I have to do is set a cost base that meets the needs of flexible development to meet the growth needs of the company." The reason to make my cost base as flexible as possible, rather than giving it a fixed cost, is to be able to apply to ever-expanding business. ”

Sackman that using a private cloud platform is the basis for further adoption of a variety of cloud services, he said: "If this interview is after five years, maybe less than five years, that is, after our innovation is over, you will find me sharing computing power." Most of the current outsourcing is in the shared storage LAN. While security is the key to cloud computing, I think that when you can clearly say what you need and just have a supplier who can achieve this and prove it to you, then you have to give the job to the supplier. So, in the future, unless it is very important and secretive to the group of data, the rest of the data, computing capacity, etc., we will be processed through the cloud technology. I think it's also a commodity. ”

Harvester to interact with consumers on Facebook

Sackman's other innovations include the employees ' work schedule management system, where M&b's stores can schedule staff hours based on projected daily passenger flow, which has been deployed to 80% and is expected to be deployed within the year. In addition, this system relies on a central master data management system, which is responsible for the management of items such as products, prices and promotional activities.

According to Sackman, this central master data management system will be based on the group for different business management needs, from the brand angle or store angle to provide a variety of functions. Product pricing and promotions will make it easier to relate to m&b social media, such as interacting with fans on Facebook.

"On Facebook, the group's Toby Carvery and Harvester brands have the largest number of British local fans, and through this social networking site, we can get consumer feedback that helps the group better develop its brand's future strategy." For us, Facebook has become one of our online markets. ”

By equipping relevant employees with a Windows Mobile-based smartphone, these employees can access the company's e-mail box anytime, anywhere, using analytics tools, and viewing information about the company's announcements. Sackman said the group had been equipped with HTC smartphones for more than 300 employees who travel frequently. "We have a large number of employees who need to be moved to work, including operators, property personnel, marketers, etc., who need to get the latest data in their stores and decide on how to deal with the business, rather than going back to the office to do it," he said. It is therefore necessary to equip them with a smartphone that can access the company's data at any time, which can greatly improve efficiency, both for the individual employees and for the group. ”

Communication skills are more important to IT managers than "advanced technical knowledge"

Sackman added: "These employees no longer need to spend the entire weekend to organize their inbox, the work can be done on the road." ”

Another of the more humane technological innovations of M&B is to change the previously relatively fixed information dissemination and training channels, with a more dynamic interface similar to that of social networking, which includes interactive applications such as employee lists.

"We set up a roster of employees for each bar and employees can sign in to the system every day," Sackman said. This allows managers to see which employees are on a daily basis on the web, and employees can apply to work shifts with colleagues through the application. So what we're offering now is much more than just company information and training materials, but it's starting to be a nationwide business-personal interaction with employees. ”

For Sackman, people management is a key issue. For the CIO position, the "soft skills" of personnel management have become increasingly important. Highlighting your intelligence and communication skills among co-workers is a key skill that it leaders need, sometimes more important than "advanced technical knowledge".

Sackman finally pointed out: "Communication skills are basic skills." And this kind of communication is two-way, I need to convey the company's business strategy to those who really implement the project transformation of the technical staff, which requires a wide range of communication skills and knowledge, as well as increasingly unimportant technical skills. On the other hand, I need to explain to my leader and my management team the company's existing technology, the technology in the market, and the direction of technology development, so that the leading team can develop the most appropriate enterprise development strategy. ”