With paper and excel based field assessments, the option to save time is not readily available when you consider the amount of time and paper that's wasted. The more locations and field managers that a restaurant chain has, the more productive time is lost due to the various steps required to complete an assessment. In a standard paper and excel field assessment, there are a few main phases before the final report is submitted. These stages can be extremely time consuming due to the following requirements:

• Photo Capture
• Action Plan Creation
• Problem Identification
• Email Distribution

First, when conducting an assessment in a location, the district manager must take handwritten notes and use the “eyeball” approach to gather information. While surveying the restaurant, photos are usually captured, commonly done using nothing more than their own cell phone. With these photos taken sporadically throughout the visit, the District Manager is required to recall the exact photo associated with each task making this more difficult and time consuming.

Only once they have completed their walk around and subsequent meeting with store employees, the district manager must sit and transcribe their hand-written notes into a detailed excel file adding considerable more time to the assessment. When inputting the data into excel, creating follow up and action plans for specific issues are also done.

The process described above achieves a start to creating a final report. At this point the raw data has been inputted into excel, however the implications, analysis and bottom line approach has yet to been accomplished. The district manager will now review the data to identify areas for improvement and success within the restaurant. After quantifying a few main points, they can now send out the final report via email with all the photos and action plans attached to the relevant stakeholders.

This practice is extremely common among restaurant chains. Spending hours of time conducting manual tasks and logistics instead of working on improving your business hurts productivity not to mention wasting massive quantities of paper.

With a digital solution, this process can be done automatically, with reports created and emailed out instantly. Click on the link below to learn more!