OPS400: Business Process Management
You have been hired as a business process consultant for a fast food restaurant to strategically reorganize, standardize, and improve their service processes through the use of technology. Discuss how you will help to better utilize expensive resources to improve the restaurant’s strategic position and operational effectiveness.
Write a 1,050- to 1,400-word paper in which you identify the relationship between the restaurant’s current strategic positon and its operational effectiveness.
1. Discuss the business process improvements necessary to produce and deliver the restaurant’s products and services in the following key areas:
- Business strategy
- Operations strategy
- Process architecture and operating policies
2. Discuss how the use of technology can be used to improve the restaurant’s s overall effectiveness.
3. Evaluate the relationship between the restaurant’s strategy and the design of its managerial operations.
4. Research a competitor in a similar market and compare and contrast how strategic positioning of the restaurant’s product will make the company more successful than the competition.
5. Identify how strategic positioning and operational effectiveness were used (or can be used) in order to gain (or sustain) the restaurant’s competitive advantage.
Business Strategy
Any fast food restaurant that wishes to grow autonomously is supposed to employ the new technology by going mobile. Mobiles give room for quick service cafeterias to produce more operative operations that reach consumers whose verdicts are made to quirk (Namin, 2017). A quick service restaurant is supposed to have an established relationship with the consumers and also have the capacity to reach them at the moment of decision. The firm can go mobile through the following strategies that will earn them more customers;
Leveraging an Honest Image
QSR has been a choice for consumers because of its tasty, inexpensive and convenient food. However, the QSR has been facing disruptions in the recent past. The QSR has lacked transparency over the nutritional value in the food supplied and this has led to a damaged image of the fast food restaurants (Wan & Law, 2017). The consumers are no longer interested with what is inexpensive but will pay any price as long as there is;
Clear labeling: some consumers are willing to expensive food as long as they know the labeling is valid. The restaurant in question is therefore supposed to improve on produce cataloguing to include on things like calories and drenched fat. The firm is also supposed to continue to strive for clear and concise labeling which will support the consumers desire to indulge while staying informed.
Responsible sourcing: consumers are more concerned about where the QSR get their produce. The consumers are concerned on how animals are treated and therefore need the producers to farm ethically (Gascón, Rodrígue, & Bernal, 2017). It is therefore important for the GSR in question to listen to the consumer grievances and work with the principled producers. This will earn the consumers benevolence.
Streamlining Fast Food Involvement on Mobile
Customers dine at QSR out of longing for expediency. The convenience is evident in consumers desire to use pones. It is important for QSR to improve their services through mobile ordering. The consumers doing mobile ordering should be able to view menus on phone, able to check specials, enable easy payment and offer the consumers opportunity to earn rewards (Klein, 2016).
Addition of Third-Party Mobile App to Fast Food Advertising Policies
QSR places limitations on consumers who use proprietary rewards program. The consumers can only be rewarded at that particular eatery chain and there is no room for the acquisition of new customers (Klein, 2016). The QSR should allow mobile shop apps that allow consumers to gain rewards at various places. If the QSR aims at increasing the market share, it should enable the visiting customers to participate in various locations and make certain purchases anywhere.
Operations Strategy
QSR business is one of the simplest business concepts ever devised. For the fast food restaurant to improve the operations strategy, it can have a stellar menu, excellent food and a ready wait staff. It is however important to have an efficient operating system.it is important for the fast food restaurant to have a detailed training program so that they can establish standard operating procedures that will assist in ensuring the restaurant runs efficiently at all costs (Weng, Gotcher, & Kuo, 2017).
The restaurant is also supposed to diligently track the cost of food. If a fast food restaurant does not lessen food left-over and create food price cards, it will finally have too much food going out the front door to the dog bags and garbage cans. There is a need to check the share sizing and account levels before making any purchases (Klein, 2016). The fast food restaurant needs to use a food cost calculator to assist in reducing waste to improve the restaurants bottom line.
It Is Also Important To Give Workers What They Require
Making sure that the employees have the proper tools for their work will ensure that operational efficiency in work is achieved in the front house and back house of the restaurant. Adopting the modern restaurant technology will also ensure that the management is enlightened on its workload and ensure that the managers have access to the wealth information they never imagined in the past (Klein, 2016).
Improve On Accuracy and Order Timing
Paper orders are a nightmare in fast food restaurants since they get misplaced and damanged.it is advisable to remind all servers to submit the paper orders after their shift is over. The kitchen staff should be well trained to read the paper orders too. The dining staffs should walk each order to the kitchen and hand each ticket to the line cooks for efficiency and customer satisfaction. Alternatively, the fast food restaurant should have table based systems that enables servers to punch the customers’ orders while still at the table and ensure that the order is directly transmitted to the cooks (Klein, 2016). This will ensure that there is no misread, tickets are not mislaid and or damaged and this enables servers to take care of the tables freely.
Expand the Customer Reach Online
The fast food restaurant should employ the modern marketing technology. They should build several media platforms and other online accounts. This will enable the manager to manage multiple accounts automatically and lead to reduction in workload. The management can also create gift cards and customer loyalty programs to improve customer loyalty (Klein, 2016).
Process Architecture and Operating Policies
The fast food restaurant should react to changing its demographics so as to stay competitive with the fast casual restaurants. The restaurant should come up with a healthier dining option. The restaurants stores should be refreshed after every three years (Wan & Law, 2017). After seven years, they should have a full-on design by tearing out the seats, updating exterior architectural elements or even scrapping the whole structure and starting to build from the foundation.
Importance of Technology to Fast Food Restaurants
Improvement of technology in the fast food restaurants has led to elevation in consumers’ advancement and experience. There have been autonomous vehicles that have been used to deliver products and this has led to improvement in efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Mobile sharing- fast food restaurants have been testing mobile applications that allow consumers to place their order online via mobile applications (Wan & Law, 2017). These have offered increased level of convenience for the consumers and the restaurants too.
Facebook ordering-the utilization of Facebook platform and the integration of Facebook payment for restaurant has assisted chains to get their ordering onto the most popular and cheapest platform and this has the potential to grow the sales for restaurants.
Relationship between operations management and the design of managerial operations
An operation management is used in addressing the needs of various business areas (Wan & Law, 2017). It is important to streamline the operations management to maintain customer loyalty.
The design of goods and the services offered and the operations management assists in maintaining product competitiveness and addressing market needs.
Process of capacity design-the restaurants operations strategy involves production lines. Most of the ingredients are manufactured and prepared in the restaurants production lines and this ensures that there is efficiency and capacity utilization.
Wendy’s
Quality management – This is a strategic decision area for Wendy’s. The objective of the firm is to maintain high quality standards and match outputs and the expectations of the consumer.
Capacity design – Wendy’s operation management has more lines of production. Wendy’s produces most of the ingredients by themselves. This leads to capacity utilization and improvement in efficiency
Location strategy – Wendy ‘s has a typical business strategy in this area. The firm maintains a strategically located restaurant to support centers as support hubs for the franchisees. The firm has its restaurants located new town centers and also in the city centers.
The productivity measures for this firm are maintained in various criterions. The variations among the operations management lead to differences in productivity measures used. There are notable productivity criteria used by Wendy’s including; stock out rate, orders fulfilled per hour and rate of problems sold. All these have led to the success of Wendy’s in the past (Namin, 2017).
Application of Operational Effectiveness and Strategic Positioning
Operational effectiveness is important in fast food restaurants. The firm can use operational effectiveness in several ways including;
- Creation of clear communication and faster collaboration
- Comprehension of delivery management
- Focusing on operational learning and knowledge of the staff
- Improving employee and retention of customers
On the other hand, strategic positioning ensures that the firm meets the particular needs of the market and offer value that may not be offered by the competitors (Wan & Law, 2017).
References
- Gascón, J. F., Rodrígue, J. R., & Bernal, P. M. (2017). Social media use of fast food companies. Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI), 45(5), 1-5.
- Klein, R. (2016). Fast-Food Restaurant Industry. Cleveland Perspective, 132(45), 1930-2016.
- Namin, A. (2017). Revisiting customers’ perception of service quality in fast food restaurants. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 34(5), 70-81.
- Wan, S., & Law, R. (2017). Leveraging online reviews in the hotel industry. In Analytics in smart tourism design, 14(5), 235-252.
- Weng, S. J., Gotcher, D., & Kuo, C. F. (2017). Lining up for quick service—The business impact of express lines on fast-food restaurant operations. Journal of Foodservice Business Research, 20(1), 65-81.