Want to know the #1 reason restaurants use Schedulefly? (Hint – it isn’t measurable for an ROI analysis)

Last week I spoke to a Cornell hospitality school student who is working on a project in which he has to pitch an imaginary business on a product. He decided to pick our restaurant staff scheduling software. He told me he loved using it last summer when he was on summer break and working in a restaurant back home.

When he asked why most restaurants use Schedulefly, I told him that while his project would probably receive a better grade if he helped quantify labor cost savings, time savings and other measurable ROI (return on investment) factors, the truth was that most restaurants use it because it simply makes the lives of the owners, managers and staff members easier. Period. There’s really not much more to it.

Restaurants that are worn out with time sucking process of creating paper schedules and then dealing with the constant schedule phone calls and shift trade requests quickly calculate that $30 or $40 or so per month is an easy decision if it turns hours into minutes and keeps the phone from ringing (unless it’s a customer).

Since the question came up, we decided to toss out a quick online survey to our customers, and ask the the #1 reason they use Schedulefly. We gave them six choices, and asked them to choose just one. We also allowed for responses outside of our six options by providing an “Other” field. We cut the survey off after we received 100 responses, and here’s how those 100 people broke it down…

So 55% of the respondents indicated that Schedulefly simply saves them time and (daily) hassles and makes communication easier. It’s really that simple. And notice that only one person – one – said the #1 reason to use Schedulefly is for labor cost savings. Well, that is except for the 8 (out of 10) “Other” respondents, who all said they wanted to pick all six answers…

So while companies selling enterprise software solutions to large organizations with tons of locations and multiple decision makers often spend tons of energy trying to quantify their ROI factors, we simply enjoy telling people that for about a dollar or two per day, we can make life easier for their restaurant team members.

Wil