Business Solutions of a Successful Restaurant
CIS 207
April 30, 2012
Vickie Martin

Business Solutions of a Successful Restaurant
Taking on a task to simplify, streamline, and update a company’s business process or more appropriate, the company’s technology-based support and service, is not one on the easier side. Darden Restaurants took on this task in 2005 as it was faced with acquiring solutions to its growing and success. There were many changes that needed to be made but executives within Darden knew that restaurant operations were at the forefront of the updating which meant that they were in need of a serious overhaul of the company’s POS system and back-office support systems. At that time they were using dated Microsoft applications such as MS-DOS and Windows NT server operating systems. These were fine and acceptable the decade before when they were integrated. With the growth and goals that Darden wanted to achieve, a new solution was needed. In the end and looking toward the future, “Darden wanted to reduce the time and cost of maintaining its aging point of service devices, as well as a way to save time and cost of deploying devices to new restaurants.” (Microsoft, 2007)
To accomplish this task, Darden asked the assistance of its in-house IT guy, Bob Gentry, whose title is actually Director of Strategic Initiative. The director was able to review many options before choosing a direction to take, but with the help of their hardware supplier, NCR, and Microsoft, Darden was able to list their requirements one on one with both companies and have them present the best solution. Currently, Darden restaurants and the operations that are included within their doors are run by HP ML 350 Series server computers and all stations or work areas are represented by NCR RealPOS 70 devices. The decision to use these servers and POS devices has to do with promoting manageability and compatibility with the Microsoft based server technologies that were decided on. The selection of the NCR POS devices is not new to Darden, but they did need to update the actual devices. NCR has always been in use by Darden, but with the new applications there was a need to update this hardware also. With NCR’s track record of success and the durability that the company shows in its products, Darden chose to stick with this company and actually include them in the entire process of updating their business process. This meant actually to have NCR present in discovering and listing the new business requirements to be included in the new POS application and its systems.
Though Darden has been able to develop its own POS application that runs within its network, DiSH, it is all based off Microsoft server technology and Microsoft applications. The POS application that is in all of Darden’s restaurants is called DASH, Darden Applications (for) Service & Hospitality. This is another acronym that falls in line with their ability to succeed in their goal, guest satisfaction. This application, though, produced and managed by Darden’s IT department, is completely Windows based. The technology they use is actually a part of a trio of Microsoft server technologies that was designed to promote manageability. (Microsoft, 2007) This trio includes Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003, Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager 2007, and the Active Directory directory service within Microsoft Server 2003 operating system. On the client side or the actual restaurant operations, Windows XP Professional OS runs all of the NCR RealPOS70 stations. These stations handle the majority of order input and POS transactions.
With these changes occurring and the implementation of a new overall business process, Darden has been able to continue its success. This transformation only took about a year and a half. By 2007, the entire overhaul was complete. Currently, Darden is still attempting to achieve a better solution in regard to its business model and the technology that drives it. With wireless technologies evolving, this is a direction that Darden can see itself making in the next few years. “(Darden’s)IT is now a strategic asset to help Darden accomplish its business goals. We are a driver for our company’s business success” (Gentry, 2007). The success that Darden has shown is mostly contributable to the company’s forward thinking and technological advances. The benefits that have been achieved are not limited to being able to prevent most hardware failures because of the communication of its servers and devices. This has enabled a proactive IT operation instead of a reactive type. With this proactive approach, it has cut deployment time in half. In the end, Darden saves millions of dollars annually and has relied on IT to help in driving business success.

Bibliography
Unknown, . (2007, November). Darden Restaurants Cuts Operational Costs, Speeds Time-to- Market, with POS Solution. Microsoft Customer Solution Retail Industry Case Study

Products and Services. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.ncr.com/products-and-services/pos- solutions/realpos-terminals/ncr-realpos-70xrt