Unscientific survey: More than a third of polled operators had their software head in the clouds
This article is part of NRN’s Reporter’s Notebook blog.
Through a very unscientific poll of the operators attending the recent "Cloud Solutions for Restaurant Workforce Management" webinar, 36.5 percent of respondents, or about one in three, said their company now deploys some sort of software application in "the cloud."
It was not surprising that more than 60 percent of the respondents said their organizations had not yet tried a 'cloud' application, or software that runs at remote location and is accessed from the field across the Internet or a private network using Web browser or thin-client programs. The webinar presented by Nation’s Restaurant News and sponsored by Kronos was intended to educate, as well as look at a case study involving onsite feeder Delaware North Cos., so it stood to reason that a large percentage of sideliners would log on and listen in.
Madeline Laurano, of the Aberdeen Group, shared some findings by her research house, which, in 2011, asked a number of retailers about what they perceived to be the benefits of cloud-based computing. Here is one of the slides presented by Laurano that speaks to what pollees said about how the use of cloud computing lowers information technology costs.
Always interested in what the foodservice operator community is up to, in terms of technology use, the webinar featured other poll questions. Here are the findings:
1.) Asked if their companies “currently invest in cloud computing for workforce management?” 19.5 percent, or 15, of the responding operators said, “Yes;” 13 percent, or 10, said they planned to do so in the next six months; 9.1 percent, or 7, said they planned to do so within the next year; and 58.4 percent, or 45, said they had no plans to make such an investment.
2.) Asked what types of computerized workforce-management tools are used by their companies, operator responses, by percentage and number of respondents, were:
* Job-application processing and candidate screening, 5 percent, or 2.
* Scheduling and time-and-attendance screening, 20 percent, or 8.
* Performance appraisals and workplace law/regulation compliance, 0 percent, or 0.
* Two or three of the above, 27.5 percent, or 11.
* All of the above, 15 percent, or 6.
* None of the above, 32.5 percent, or 13.
Here is a link to an article about the webinar and DNC's cloud experience:
Contact Alan J. Liddle at alan.liddle@penton.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @AJ_NRN