University of Hertfordshire

"Information is Power"

After two years of operation, FoodHertfordshire’s David Jones sums up the benefits of MCR’s Symphony Reporting - a system he reckons has ‘already paid for itself’ – and looks forward to adding the benefits of Symphony Enterprise to his management armoury.

David Jones can’t claim the credit for instigating FoodHertfordshire’s relationship with MCR Systems – it predates his arrival at the not-for-profit organisation responsible for the University of Hertfordshire’s catering – but he’s as evangelistic about the company and its products as any of its many customers.

As General Manager, David is responsible for all food and drink served within the University of Hertfordshire. Trained as a chef, he started his career within the hotel sector in London, moving into the contract catering market in 1998. In 2004, he moved into the university sector with City University, London, arriving at the University of Hertfordshire in 2006.

A huge and diverse estate

FoodHertfordshire provides catering services to the university in four main areas: There are four restaurants, seven retail outlets; Hospitality and Delivered Services, (providing anything from teas and coffees, to meeting rooms, to banquets for 500) and finally vending. It’s a huge and diverse estate, both geographically and in terms of the product offer.

The MCR system he inherited was, David says, ‘good, but rather limited’. ‘The system was based around stock monitoring’ David says. ‘It was great at delivering up-to-date information on what was sold and the value, but it didn’t predict trends.’

Two years ago, David presided over the implementation of MCR’s Symphony Reporting. FoodHertfordshire was one of the first UK university caterers to adopt the technology and David says that the system ‘revolutionised’ the way the business was managed. ‘It delivers information and information is power’, he says simply.

Instant access to information

Examples to justify his assertion come thick and fast: ‘just this morning I was in a phone conversation and I was required to work out the carbon footprint of Coca Cola. We sell 14,000 bottles a year, but I was able to access the information instantly via Symphony Reporting.’ According to David, the system’s ability to make sales forecasts more accurate delivers further advantages: ‘In every catering establishment there’s on-going debate about pricing products’, he says. ‘This morning, for example, we were discussing whether we should switch to a post-mix rather than a bottled beverage, and how much we might charge. The whole process of that comparative analysis was simplified because of the features of Symphony Reporting, which allows us to harvest sales statistics and export them into spreadsheets.’  

The audit process

Whilst David and his team have enjoyed the benefits of fastidious stock control and accurate forecasting, he says that the real strength of Symphony Reporting is revealed in the audit process. It is in this function, David suggests, that ‘the system pays for itself.’

‘Thanks to the system I caught fraudulent activity at a till and was able to act immediately’ he says. ‘Symphony Reporting’s Digital Dashboard highlighted an anomaly in KPIs through a particular till. We were able to scrutinize the till with our CCTV system and soon we had all the evidence we required to ensure that the case against the suspect was watertight. Without Symphony Reporting, it might have taken us months to realise that there was an issue and to correct it, and in the process we could have lost a lot of money.’

The scam that Symphony Reporting exposed was nothing new: the novelty lay in the speed with which it was identified and dealt with. ‘It was about substituting one product for another’, David explains. ‘The digital dashboard highlighted the fact that sales of a top-performing product had plummeted at one till, whilst at the same time sales of a peripheral line had increased exponentially. It didn’t make sense – the trend was not being repeated elsewhere.

‘We discovered that the till operator in question had been swapping one product for another. When customers bought a coke for £1.10, the operator had been ‘ringing up’ the sale of a 10p butter portion. Without Symphony Reporting, the till operator might have pocketed hundreds of pounds before we got wise to what was going on.’  That’s why David is prompted to say: ‘that single discovery paid for the system. It’s as simple as that.’

Centralisation of information

The moral of the story for the remaining staff is simple. ‘They realise that they’re being scrutinized and that we don’t have to be peering constantly over a till-operator’s shoulder to be sure that he or she is working honestly,’ David says. ‘It’s this centralisation of information that has handed management a much-needed advantage over rogue staff. Every ‘no-sale’ opening of the till is recorded, and if one till is racking up more ‘no sales’ than others in the operation, then it’s time for us to send in a supervisor to investigate.’

The system has made the management of a multi-outlet, geographically spread estate far easier than was the case previously. David and his team can keep a watchful eye on all of the business, all of the time, from anywhere, thanks to the ability to interact with Symphony Reporting via the Internet.

Symphony Enterprise – a boon to kitchen creativity

With two years of success ‘in the bank’, FoodHertfordshire is about to ‘up-grade’ to MCR’s latest management tool – Symphony Enterprise. Even so, the move is not one that David and his team have made lightly. During the decision making process, they visited the universities at Loughborough and York to see the system working. David saw immediate advantages. ‘Our old Stockmaster system was good but it wasn’t ideal’, he says. ‘It routinely took us half a day to put a new dish on the menu and the process of doing so was so drawn out that the chefs simply didn’t bother. It’s fair to say that our chef’s creativity was being blunted. My personal passion has always been for simple, well-cooked dishes that use available fresh ingredients and the old system made it difficult to take advantage of high-quality fresh produce. With Symphony Enterprise on board, that process is simple and instant, and it means that our chefs can now adapt their dishes and call upon their creativity to encompass the great, fresh produce that is available to them.’

In addition to the speed and ease with which new offers can be added to the menu, Symphony Enterprise will make the monitoring of promotions, such as BOGOF and meal-deals, so much easier. ‘It’ll show us what’s working and what’s not’, David says.