Summing It Up
• New software products can give catering directors more time, through tools such as automated task lists, financial management grids and built-in calendars, to help them manage the myriad of activities they must juggle at one time. |
Jennifer Musitano, Director of Catering at Moorpark (Calif.) Country Club (pictured below), can’t imagine running her club’s catering business without the help of the software product she has being using for the last three years. “Words can’t explain how beneficial it is to have all the tools and resources I need in one system,” she says. “It has helped us grow and expand our business immensely.”
Musitano’s views echo a now-common sentiment in the catering segments of clubs and resorts. With all of the hats a catering director has to wear—from budget director to customer service manager to event planner—it is a constant challenge to focus on what matters most: the customer. New software products, packed with hundreds of exciting features and other state-of-the-art enhancements, are coming to the rescue by giving catering directors more time, as tools such as automated task lists, financial management grids and built-in calendars help them manage the myriad of activities they must juggle every month.
Today’s technology is certainly a far cry from the makeshift word-processing and spreadsheet files of yesterday that most clubs used to try to manage the catering portion of their business. And as more sophisticated software products pop up in the market, properties are beginning to see the many benefits of taking the time—and undertaking the expense—needed to get with a program.
New products can help clubs automate almost all of their daily tasks—from costing menu items and budgeting, to filling out contracts and booking rooms. They can improve communications with the club’s staff, save time booking events, and completely streamline correspondence with prospects and customers. These programs are all designed to cut back the time catering directors have to spend on paperwork, by automating tasks that were previously done manually.
And with more time, catering directors like Musitano are finding they can improve their efficiency, profitability and customer service.
Relying on a mix of word-processing and spreadsheet files makes it too easy to slip up in today’s market. |
When Musitano came to Moorpark, the club relied on spreadsheets, word-processing files and a reservation book to keep track of all of its events and operate its catering department. She decided to do some research to see how available technology could help the club organize its outside business better, while simultaneously cutting back on the amount of time that the staff spent on administrative tasks.
“There wasn’t any real system in place for creating contracts or booking events,” Musitano says. “If someone forgot to write an event down [in the book], it would be lost. There was too much room for human error.”
Today’s software offerings allow clubs to set up custom proposals, view a complete calendar of events, create invoices, track clients, calculate product costs, hire staff, build recipes, analyze profits, write letters, track payments, and manage rooms. |
An Easy Sell
Showing how a more automated approach to catering would help the Moorpark staff save time, get better organized, eliminate errors, improve service, and increase the bottom line, Musitano presented her research to the club’s Board of Directors.
“It wasn’t difficult to get management on board for the new technology,” she says, “since it was obvious how much the club would benefit from a system. One of the major things for me has been the ease of booking events. I can now check the system, even years out, to see what’s available and open.”
Many of the new software products are now equipped with “life cycle” technology that’s designed to guide a property through the whole process of booking an event. Vendors do much of the work on the front end, customizing a program by pre-loading how many rooms a club or resort has, or the cost for its menu items. When the property’s staff then starts to use the software, it’s easy to automatically get information on which rooms are open, or what an event will cost them, just by entering a few specific details.
“Having all the tools and resources in one system has helped us expand our business immensely.” |
Programs can also help with marketing initiatives, by managing customer databases for e-mail blasts and mailing campaigns. One of the major aims of the new breed of software is to help properties provide consistent customer service, with the technology designed to flow in the same way that a catering director would deal with a prospect or client.
In the past, as they accessed menu and contract information when discussing an event, catering directors would have to jump around from word-processing documents to spreadsheets. But “action buttons” are now built in to new software to take managers through each step of booking, planning and executing an event—filling in deposit information, generating contracts, and keeping track of payments, including reminders for when installments are due.
Useful and sophisticated, yet incredibly easy to use, new technologies are using tools and wizards like these to help make the catering process almost automatic.
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