C G Prasad

Controlling of Rising Food Cost has always been a fire-fighting task for every Food Cost Controllers and related responsible people. The primary task in controlling food cost will be to install a robust software application for Materials Management and automate the whole process of Materials Management in the Hotel’s Food and Beverage department. It seems quite easy to install software for the purpose since there are plenty of applications available off the shelf in the software market. So the major task is to identify the right software that suits the sole purpose.

Following are identified as the requisite features for a Materials Management Package of Food & Beverage (F&B) should have.

User Friendly
This is the main criterion of selection for any software that needs to be installed at the premises. User Friendliness means, the User should be able to get trained and operate the software without much complications involved. Normally the Users of ‘Materials Management Package’ don’t have much of skills on IT. So lack of User friendliness will hamper the sole purpose of installation and use of software. User friendliness is referred as Easy Navigation of Screens and Easy Operational Process. For instance, It has been noticed that ‘Recipe Management’ of many a ‘Materials Management Packages’ are too complicated to be implemented that people start using the package without this function. This means the main purpose of the Application is not served properly.

Process Automation
The staff at Materials Management Department deals with 100s of stock items on a daily basis, that needs to be updated in the system for the purpose of issue, transfer and receipt. This is a highly time consuming process. The software should be able to implement ‘Bar Code Management’ effectively so that lot of time is saved for the Users in their daily work schedules. This increases the staff efficiency to a certain level.

Process Automation also refers to encouraging paperless environment. The system should have the facility to manage authorization process of order/issue requests for stock items/services online.

Effective Reporting
The Application should provide effective reports that relates to the day-to-day business. System should also allow the Users to generate customized reports as and when it’s required. The report interface should allow the User to generate reports on the Fly. There should be a facility to depict results in Graphical mode by the means of Graphs and Charts.

Cost Effectiveness
The implementation of Application should never call for huge investment in Hardware, Software and other peripherals. For Example the Customer should have the choice of opting for type of database to be used. If the Hotel is already having some database deployed centrally for some other application then one should be able to deploy ‘Materials Management Package’s’ database in the same schema (this saves great amount of investment in Hardware and Software Licenses)

Effective Interfacing
This is very important aspect for any ‘Materials Management Package’. The application should facilitate seamless interface with the existing POS system at the hotel. This is required to update the Revenue figures of Food and Beverage Sales to the Materials Management System and calculate the consumptions of the stock items as per the defined recipes.

It ‘s also appreciable to have a seamless interface with the existing Back Office system of the Hotel to update the accounting figures.

Many a times it is noticed that though the software boast of seamless interface but in reality it contains many flaws. Ultimately this does not serve the purpose of software.

It is noticed that most of the hotels uses the ‘Materials Management Packages’ without Recipe Management and proper interface with Revenue POS system. This doesn’t serve the sole objective of a ‘Materials Management Package’ for the Hotel Operation. If the above-mentioned points are considered seriously before choosing the application then it will definitely help the hotel to meet the objectives and increase efficiency of F&B management Department.

C.G. Prasad
Head Hotel Products
Cleartrip Travel Service Pvt Ltd