4 Ways Integrating POS Data with Cloud Video Will Help Your Restaurant Run Smoother

As a restaurant owner/operator, you know how challenging it can be to see what’s happening in your locations across a wide geographic region, and to quickly gather point-of-sale (POS) exception reporting without traveling onsite. What if one small change could make your life simpler and help your business run smoother? Integrating cloud video surveillance with your POS system offers this and much more. 

Restaurant and quick-service restaurant (QSR) owner/operators can leverage their existing POS and security camera systems to gain new insights with cloud video surveillance. It enables you to quickly find crucial data, generate exception reporting, monitor transactions, and improve the customer experience. POS data together with a cloud video management system (VMS) allows you to quickly view financial transactions and automatically see what’s happening in a single click. It offers you full visibility into all areas of your operations and financial transactions, across all locations, without having to step foot inside each restaurant. 

Below are the top four ways this integrated cloud solution can help you improve your restaurants’ operational efficiency, grow profits, and enhance customer service. 

1. Reduce Shrinkage: With 75 percent of inventory shrinkage related to theft, and most of that theft by employees, according to the National Restaurant Association, finding new ways to reduce shrinkage is extremely valuable. Video integration with a restaurant or retail POS system goes a long way toward deterring and identifying employee theft and expediting investigations. How does this work? By viewing cloud video from your PC, smartphone, or tablet, you can:
   
   • Flag and review questionable transactions and exception reporting with a single click
   • Uncover theft and fraud within minutes
   • Conduct investigations swiftly without having to travel onsite
   • Rapidly identify unusual cashier patterns and receive alerts for irregular transactions such as sweethearting, excessive discounting, or suspicious refunds

2. View Your Entire Region Remotely: Pairing your POS transaction data with cloud video allows you to gain visibility into your entire geographic region from anywhere. Accessing video on the cloud is easy from your smartphone or PC, enabling you to view each of your locations without having to go onsite. At your fingertips are insights into customer buying patterns, detailed cashier and transaction data, and much more to help you optimize marketing and preserve profits.
   
   • Review and rank performance by district, region, location, and/or exception type
   • Compare transactions by cashier, register, transaction type/product, and/or time of day
   • Identify underperforming locations
   • Quickly search SKUs and transaction codes across all locations
   • Link sales data to inventory and sales to evaluate performance and compare sales/inventory trends across sites, shifts, and personnel

3. Enhance Operational Efficiency: You’ve established standard protocols and procedures to ensure a consistent, and optimum customer experience. Using a cloud VMS enables you to observe in-store activity and employee behavior remotely, helping you gain 24/7 control over your operational efficiency. 
   
   • Determine if the speed of service, upsells, and loyalty programs meet or fall short of expectations
   • Confirm that correct portions and correct number of condiments are being provided with each order
   • View if employees are engaging with customers, and identify and reward top performers

4. Improve the Customer Experience: Get valuable data about customer buying behavior and how employees are interacting with them to help you meet demand and adapt your store promotions and layout to boost sales. Analytics can be easily accessed from your cloud VMS and help you understand:
   
   • Peak business days and hours, and average customer wait times, enabling you to adjust staffing accordingly 
   • Customer traffic flow and behavior, which can improve your store layout and inform future builds
   • What displays are piquing customers’ interest and turning shoppers into buyers

To optimize your video surveillance and POS integration, take our business surveillance quiz or download a copy of our flyer.

Eagle Eye Networks

Since 2012, Eagle Eye Networks has provided smart cloud surveillance solutions, leveraging AI to drive natural language search, automation, and more. Eagle Eye’s camera-agnostic approach heightens security while saving money, time, and resources.