DataWedge November 2009 Newsletter

It's that time of year again... when the Novemember and December holiday seasons both bring times of joy and rest... and wreck havoc with our ordering volumes, our employee scheduling, and restaurant availability.

This month, we'll be covering a few items of note learned from previous holiday seasons. For those of you already "in the know", it may serve to jog your memory of things to watch out for this year... and for those of you still in your first year of operation, hopefully you can take a few hints of items yet to come.

Been watching the weather?

As of the time of this writing, the U.S. still hasn't had that first seasonal "cold snap"... that FIRST CHILL that sets in across the nation, causing people to look outside and reconsider ever stepping foot in the outdoors.

(Well, Denver had their freak snowstorm... but it disappeared almost as quickly as it set in).

Whenever the first cold snap hits, it's akin to "Black Friday" in terms of sales. Customers decide that they don't want to go anywhere, and call their local delivery service and get a hot meal delivered for their family.

Every year, we hear the bitter-sweet stories of the first cold day of the season. Those who put in some effort on the front and and have their staff prepared get a nice bump in sales. Those that are NOT prepared for the sudden surge in orders are left with disappointed customers, late orders, and an opportunity lost.

Here are some "if only I would have..." hints gleaned from last year:

Make it a habit to watch the weather. Pay attention to that 7-day forecast and take note of when the weather will take it's turn.
Make sure your drivers are prepared... time to have them check the anti-freeze levels in their vehicles, check the charge on their batteries, check the tread on their tires, and that they have something as simple as an ice scraper in their glovebox.
Pay attention to local school closures.

Remember to set your 'black out dates' for on-line ordering

Your web engine has the ability to set "BLACK OUT DATES", or dates for which no orders (even advanced orders) can be placed. (This prevents a customer from logging into your web site TODAY and placing an order for delivery on Christmas day).

Every year, we get customers who forget to close their web site during key days in the holiday season, and are stuck with calling disappointed customers just before or (worse) just AFTER the holiday.

To set your black out dates:

Log into the Admin Pages for your web site at: http://admin.dtsc.net
On the left-hand side of the screen, select "Black Out Dates"
Add the dates you are CLOSED to the list of dates on the screen. This will prevent the web engine from accepting any orders for that date of delivery.

Follow up with your Restaurants

Most restaurants that partner with RDS's are not just the major chains, but local "mom & pop" enterprises... and thus their schedules have the potential to be completely different from each other.

Last year, there seemed to be an unusual number of folks who failed to do some checking up on their restaurant schedules, only to find out (too late) that some of the orders rolling in are for restaurants that have decided to close for a few days of time.

Check your office's power outlets

Lastly, it's important to keep tabs on the surge of "space heaters" that seem to pop up every year.

That is, employees seem to like to plug in small heaters underneath their desks. That in itself is not an issue, but when they plug them into the same power strip as a computer workstation or (worse) their DMS Server, a power spike when the heater kicks on can spell disaster for your network.

Keep close tabs on any new devices that invade your office environment... and make sure that they don't have the potential to overload your electrical circuits.

Did you know?

DataWedge is PHASING OUT our older on-line ordering engine at the end of this year.

As we have been migrating all of our DMS customers over to the more secure and updated DMS.NET software, we have also been migrating folks from from the OLDER on-line ordering engine to our NEWER on-line ordering engine.

How can you check to see which web engine you are currently utilizing?

Go to SETUP --> COMPANY SETUP --> WEB SETUP TAB.

If your FTP SERVER is set to use "dtsc.net", you are on the OLDER WEB SERVER.

If your FTP Server is set to use "deliverycheckout.com", you are set to use the NEW WEB SERVER.

As we roll closer and closer towards PCI Compliance for our software and our web hosting facilities, we plan on phasing out the OLDER WEB SERVER on December 31st of this year.

To get yourself changed over, you need to contact DataWedge to make the appropriate changes.

DataWedge Services

Web Services...

The process of caring and feeding your own web server on your local network can be an expensive and daunting task. Not many companies have the financial resources to purchase and maintain the hardware necessary to run a web server out of their office, in addition to the technical savvy necessary to keep it secure from hackers on the internet.

DataWedge created an On-Line Ordering engine to help solve some of these problems. Your restaurant and menu data is uploaded and hosted securely on a DataWedge professionally hosted internet server, away from your office internet connection - giving hackers no place to scratch away at your network.

DataWedge Sample Site.
The DataWedge system is a "pay-for-what-you-use" system. This means for as little as $30 per month, you can have a professional web presence available on the internet including restaurant information, menus, and on-line ordering. Use of our templates and get on the internet in a matter of days! For an example of a template site, you can click here, or click here.

Do you have an existing web site, but just want to include on-line ordering functionality? No problem... our On-Line Web engine has the ability to be wrapped inside a frame. Measuring only 720 pixels wide, you can easily integrate your own web site around an instance of an ordering engine, and have the ability to push DMS data out to the internet, and have orders push directly into your system. To see examples of companies that have integrated their own web sites with our ordering engines, you can click here, or you can click here.

If you would like more information on our on-line ordering engine, please don't hesitate to contact us (208) 874-4185 .

Meal Monger...

FoodGetters.com represents our new aggregated web site, aimed at being firmly planted as a national on-line food ordering portal.

Because DataWedge utilizes a "pay-for-what-you-use" billing system, it's in our best interest to drive as many transactions as we can towards your service.

FoodGetters.com currently is in beta with our brand new web engine, and hopes to go live in January of 2010 with as many RDS's that wish to join. At this time we are not accepting any new members for our BETA period.

If you would like more information on being a part of FoodGetters after the BETA period, please contact us (208) 874-4185.

Credit Card Processing...

DataWedge has teamed with Nova - the nation's second-largest credit card processing system - to provide a seamless charge authorization system that accepts a full range of bank and T&E cards. The DataWedge/Nova partnership offers a number of advantages over other card processing alternatives:

Low transaction/discount charges resulting from the purchasing power of one master contract for DMS clients
Elimination of ICVerify as a card processing gateway. DMS is certified with the NOVA system for direct data transmission to their system.
The ease and efficiency of a "seamless" process from order entry to authorization to funds transfer into your account

If you would like to know how much you can save over your existing credit card services, please click here and fill out our request form