Mobile application development services are taking retail business enterprises by a storm across the world. The quick service restaurant business vertical is one such segment that can profit from the rapid advances in the field of mobile app development.
Quick service restaurants base their business model on the paradigm of their ability to generate throughput in a very short span of cycle time and lead time. In essence the quick service restaurant business category is based on creating value for customers by offering value based food products in small turnaround time frames. In other words, these restaurants target customers on the go or on the move and thus add value by not only offering wholesome meals at attractive prices but also by saving the time of customers.
As such these restaurants have created a niche segment for themselves by creating key product and brand differentiators on the basis of fast and efficient service, as well as a host of other value propositions like attractive price points, last mile delivery of food at the customers’ doorstep and cash on delivery. It is important to understand the drivers of business growth in this vertical.
What Lies at the Core of the Business Value Proposition and What Does Not?
Given that the quick service restaurant business is essentially food business, the content of food being offered on the menus will always stay relevant in determining the outcomes in this vertical. The products on offer, the variety on offer and the ability to innovate low cost food offerings through new product development will be the key to doing volume business. Yet, it must be mentioned that the food on offer will be a bare minimum necessity to participate in the industry marked by cut throat competition. It is by no means a sufficient condition to guarantee a sustainable competitive advantage.
It makes enormous good sense to suggest that in an industry vertical where the core product is the food on offer, there is bound to be an overlapping of menus offered by different restaurants. This gets reflected in the product homogeneity and creation of similar if not completely congruent product groups.
Indirectly it means that for business enterprises to create a competitive advantage they need to focus on developing product differentiators to grab the attention and interest of customers. This amounts to the necessity to create differentiators along the lines of the service dimensions offered to the customers like faster turnaround times, better last mile delivery, more options of cash on delivery and undoubtedly more interface avenues for customers to place orders in a fast and seamless manner.
How Does Technology Alter the Quick Service Restaurant Business Landscape?
In the quick service restaurant space every order from a customer, and every commitment to deliver the food at the doorstep of the customer within the time limit promised, is a fresh project. Capabilities have to be developed in the business process to achieve efficiency in each and every stage of the order to delivery cycle, and in both the front and back-end to reduce wastage of resources, time, efforts and money.
This calls for the harnessing of technology to engineer a business process that distributes each stage as a key result area to a team or individual. Each team or individual in turn would take care of each stage assigned to deliver performance on the lines of pre-decided metrics of time, resource and effort engagements.
Finally there has to be synchronization in the efforts of the different teams working in the different departments to produce a well coordinated process to deliver a great customer experience. There are two stages where mobile apps development services from high quality apps development vendors can come in handy: sales and in-house coordination in operations.
Mobile Applications Development for Sales in Quick Service Restaurants
It is an obvious statement that one of the crucial aspects of the quick service restaurants business is to reduce the ordering time for customers. As such mobile applications do a fine job by reducing the time taken to place the order. Moreover, apart from reducing the ordering time, it makes the very experience of placing an order an easy, simple and seamless experience for customers.
It also alleviates any chances of human errors it taking orders over the phone. Owing to the fact that customers can place orders on the move on their smart phones it represents a better option than the older and more traditional sales ordering over the web. In fact accuracy in the order acceptance also rubs off on the efficiency with the billing process and can easily be channeled for instructions to the kitchen for the preparation process to begin.
Low cost mobile applications built on platforms like Android can come in very handy. In fact the addition of a mobile app for order booking is just one of the most primitive steps towards increasing the sales opportunities.
Mobile Applications Development Services for Back-end Coordination
Mobile applications development can be harnessed to consolidate the coordination among different departments working at the back-end of quick service restaurants. This can result in improvement in efficiency of different departments concerned.
When quick service restaurants make commitments of delivering a pizza made to order in less than thirty minutes sharp to the customers, they are taking huge operating risks. These risks can be minimized by ensuring coordination in the efforts of different teams and individuals working in departments such as billing, order booking, kitchen, supplies and inward logistics, and delivery.
Mobile apps with features such as document sharing, brainstorming, instant messaging and search can be developed to streamline operations on a daily basis. By having the interactions among all personnel mapped and archived on the same mobile application platform, it enables the enterprise to function as a collection of cohesive teams rather than as a disparate group of fragmented individuals. As such, mobile apps that streamline business processes can increase profitability by generating cost saving and facilitating better usage of IT infrastructure to yield a higher return on investment.
On a concluding note the quick service restaurant like any other retail vertical is much more than offering a great product. It is about creating customer delight by easing out the entire purchase experience for the customer. Therefore, technological drivers of business such as mobile app development hold the potential to redraw battle lines among competing firms by creating unseen and untapped opportunities for profitability.
Images “ Hand holding a pizza slice coming out of a laptop screen / Shutterstock.com“
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