Let’s face it, pen and paper just don’t cut it anymore when it comes to managing your catering business. It’s even come to a point that using just Excel or other Microsoft office programs is not enough to keep up with the competition in the catering industry. People are staying competitive and managing their business better with everything that catering software has to offer.

Here are six benefits catering software can have for your business:

1. It Saves Time
If you are not as tech savvy as some, it can seem quite time consuming to set up a catering management software. With some types of software, this may true. However, the leading solutions take this into consideration. They provide training and a full-service support team. There are a lot of aspects of a catering business that software can help automate. First, take your inventory. If you are going in and managing every item of your inventory manually, you’re wasting a lot time, and there is a good chance of human error. Second, take your employee scheduling. It can take up a lot of your time trying to alert employees of their shifts each week and mitigating staff conflicts.

2. It Keeps Your Costs Down
Catering software is looked at as an investment. What you put in now will eventually save money for you and your business in the long run. Catering software allows you to analyze every financial area of your business so users can properly identify areas that may or may not need improvement. Things like food cost will no longer need to be eyeballed, and businesses will receive more exact calculations of their spending and how it affects their overall bottom line. It’s important for caterers to stay up-to-date on all their costs. Remember that when it comes to the hospitality industry every penny counts.

3. It Allows Your Business To Go Mobile
Today, it’s crucial catering companies have the capabilities to manage their business from anywhere. Good catering software will come with a mobile app. This will allow businesses to take everything from their shopping lists to important financials with them everywhere on their mobile device. With everything a catering business does, stacks of paper are not efficient anymore to pull off a successful catering operation.

4. It Creates a Better Customer Experience
A client expects all areas of their event to be a memorable experience. The level of success you have on the event can depend on your ability to cultivate the relationship with your client. The client experience all starts with your initial interaction. Catering software allows you to easily create stunning proposals and send them off within seconds. Manual processes for proposals can take way too long, and can impact the amount of growth a business can do. Once you have landed the catering gig, it helps to have a centralized system that is easily accessible for every aspect of the event. From knowing specific allergies to having the right amount of food, a successful catering operation has all of their client data centralized so they can deliver a faster and more efficient experience.

5. It Helps Your Staff Communicate
One of the biggest things that can make a company unsuccessful is its inability to communicate effectively. It’s very easy for the he said she said telephone game to go on, especially in the catering industry. When you have multiple departments from the servers to the kitchen, you need a streamlined communication system. The sharing of historical customer communication from one central location speeds up every process of the back of house and front of house operations.

6. It Stores Your Data
The great thing about catering software is that it allows you to discover new insights from your day-to-day business data. Every relationship you have with your clients will determine the success of your business. Catering software doesn’t just collect the customer data, it keeps it organized and easily accessible. Say Sally Johnson calls into Maple Catering and she said her friend Kim Smith couldn’t stop raving about her catering that Maple did for her at her Memorial Day party. Sally said she wants a similar menu but wants to review the appetizers from her event right then and there. In just a few easy clicks, Maple Catering can pull it up with their catering software without a problem.

Want to learn more about catering software? Book a demo with Caterease now! Click Here