SUMMER IS COMING!

It seems a little on the obvious side, but summer is coming.  As we take a quick scan over our call logs, here is what to expect in the coming months:

• Increased computer failure – component failure.  That rattle or ‘scratching’ sound that manifested itself inside your machine during the winter, and subsequently went away over the winter spring might have been your machine’s internal cooling fan.  During the cooler winter months, many computers with internal cooling fans don’t exhibit any signs of problems when this fan fails, but will exhibit all sorts of problems as ambient temperatures start to increase.
• Increased computer failure – ventilation.  Even if your computer’s internal cooling fan hasn’t failed, now is a good time to take a quick peek at dust that may have collected around your fan vents, or to see just how much STUFF has collected around your machine that would restrict air-flow.  Items like papers, folders, desktop decorations, etc can all choke your machine of a vitally needed air-flow.
• Decrease in business.  Starting at about the middle of May to around the beginning of September, the RDS world enters into the annual ‘Summer Slump’.  In this period, business tends to drop off anywhere from 5-30% from normal levels.  This drop-off is normally attributed to your local demographic taking increased family vacations.  An RDS that services a tourist community may not feel a drop in business, but an RDS that services primarily a residential sector will indeed start to feel the crunch.

Now is the perfect time to start to shift some of your focus to the corporate sector of your business.  While your individual residential customers might not be around over the summer, certainly the corporate sector of your city will still be operational. It happens every year… summer comes… but if you take the time to do a little bit of preventative maintenance and be alert to the coming (and inevitable) market shifts, you can better prepare for the months ahead.

FAQ OF THE MONTH

How long are my journal entries stored for?  Originally, order journal entries were stored for 14 days.  In recent builds, however, the order journals are stored for 90 days.  This should allow sufficient time to reference the order journals to resolve any restaurant payment disputes, while still paying attention to the amount of database space that is taken up.

DID YOU KNOW

Custom Fields allow you to better utilize the grid reports available in the system. You might have noticed a Custom Field now available in Restaurant Setup… or in Employee Setup. These fields accept any custom data, further allowing you to do your own custom groupings in grid reports.

For example, many RDS’s are starting to pay restaurants on different time schedules. Restaurant A might be every 2 weeks, while Restaurant B might be every 4 weeks. Putting in an entry in the custom field for your restaurants that follow a similar payment pattern may greatly assist you in quickly selecting the appropriate restaurants during your AP cycle.

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 our of their office, in addition to the technical savvy necessary to keep it secure from hackers on the internet.

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

Our system is billed on a "pay-for-what-you-use" system.  This means for as little as $50 a 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 at (208) 874-4185.

Meal Monger

Meal Monger represents our aggregated web site, aimed at being the target of national marketing campaigns.  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. 

We currently employ an aggressive marketing campaign utilizing a "keyword match and click-through" model on Google.  We also have "re-marketing" campaigns designed for customer retention.  These marketing efforts are designed to bring existing customers back to your delivery service, and are typically sent out prior to holidays or major events.  Example mailers can be seen by clicking here, or clicking here.

If you would like more information on being a part of Meal Monger, please contact us at (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.

Off-Site Backup

Too many times we have seen a client simply ignore the duties of backing up their system.  Make no mistake:  every single hard drive on the planet will eventually fail... it's only a matter of time.

DataWedge has pre-purchased the internet bandwidth and server capacity on the internet to offer off-site backup services to our clients.  For a small service fee of $35 a month, DMS can now upload an encrypted copy of your DMS Database to our internet server each night during the nightly maintenance routine.

Each morning, our internet server then scans each upload and generates an e-mail notification that is sent back to each customer.  That means for roughly $1 a day, you can arrive at your office each morning and be notified that your data is safe and secure at an outside facility.

If you would like more information on this service, please contact us (208) 874-4185.

Copyright 2005, DataWedge, LLC