University of York

Symphony calls the tune at the University of York

Symphony Enterprise, the web-hosted EPOS management and real time reporting system designed and manufactured by MCR Systems, has been chosen by The University of York to replace its current point-of-sale and payment handling processes.

The multi-phased project will begin with the introduction of modern equipment and supporting systems, the consequence of which, according to Richard Goodacre, Hospitality Services Manager at The University, will be: ‘immediate improvements in terms of both management effectiveness and the customer experience.’

Catering is Big Business at The University of York. The University has a range of dining areas, bars, catering and retail outlets both on and off campus that cater for the needs of staff, students and visitors. Many of these outlets are open seven days per week; all of them are managed centrally by the University’s Catering Department.

It is estimated that the University’s catering outlets, which employ 250 people and complete over one million transactions every year, generate in excess of £2.5m per annum in turnover.

The University of York is one of British Higher Education’s great success stories of recent years. Founded as recently as 1963 with just 200 students, the University now boasts a roll of over 14,000 students and staff across more than 30 academic departments, research based centres and institutes. It is ranked in the top six of U.K. universities in terms of research and the top five in teaching quality.

With the expansion of the campus over the next five years, which is expected thanks to this continuing success, it is anticipated that there will be a significant increase in catering locations, potentially reaching a total of 30 outlets and 80 tills - indeed there is a sense of the University ‘gearing up’ for growth.

"Symphony provides management with access to up-to-the-minute sales data", Mr. Goodacre said, "which is massively important when you consider that we stock 2,500 food, drink and liquor lines." Furthermore, Symphony will deliver a number of benefits for the university, many of which have a direct effect on the bottom line as Mr. Goodacre explained: "it will be possible, going forward, to introduce multi-tier pricing throughout our catering outlets and that will generate additional income for us."

Improvements, economies and opportunities for increased profitability will be noticed both front and back of house. Out of sight, administration will be streamlined: the flow of paper based management information around The University will be stemmed, thus reducing costs, particularly in management time. Crucially, the new system links seamlessly with the existing menu pricing and food control system, ‘Saffron’, by Fretwell-Downing.

Meanwhile, customers at the University’s numerous outlets will have the opportunity to make greater use of smart cards and credit / debit cards, which will allow them to avail themselves of promotional schemes and special offers. Best of all perhaps, from the customers’ point of view, will be the expected decrease in queuing time, thanks to the rapid functionality of Symphony’s tills.

Assuming the successful implementation of Phase One, which is now underway, the next step will be to integrate the EPOS system with the University’s other core information packages, namely Aggresso (the Financial Accounts system) and Kinetics (the Hospitality and Conference Management System).

David Naylor of MCR Systems described the features and benefits of the Symphony Enterprise system: "Symphony web enabled architecture will act as a control hub for The University’s EPOS systems network", he said. That means that, at the touch of button, management can monitor and control every EPOS device across the campus in real time".

"Combined with real time reporting, this gives the University the ability to actively manage its catering business by responding to changes in buying trends as they happen. Because it’s designed to cater for all the operational reporting requirements of hospitality management, the Symphony Reporting suite covers all aspects of the business at unit level and offers quantifiable added business value".

"At the back of Symphony Reporting is tried and tested software based on the latest Microsoft Business Intelligence architecture, which will allow University management to make better decisions, implement tighter controls and ease administrative tasks."

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