Free «Data Storage and Retrieval System for ABC Restaurant» Essay Sample

Data storage and retrieval system has become one of the major requirements for the business organizations nowadays. It helps the organizations achieve their goals through streamlining the processes which, in turn, results in boosting them up (Manyika et al., 2011). This paper examines the need for data storage and retrieval system for the ABC restaurant. In addition, it justifies the choices made for the various aspects of this system, including online access, quality implementation, information preservation, searching facilities, web crawling, and content mining.

Introduction to ABC Restaurant

ABC is a 60 seat New York restaurant. It focuses on healthy meals made from the freshest organic ingredients. With a strong passion for preservation of environment, ABC has become popular among foodies. Having a seasonal menu, the restaurant serves a wide range of choices from salads to pasta and pizza. Creative and intriguing entrees with poultry, seafood, and vegetarian choices are offered to appeal to a diverse clientele. The main objectives of the ABC restaurant are given below:

• Offer the freshest and safest local ingredients, presenting a seasonal menu;
• Menu free of any kind of hormones, pesticides and insecticides, synthetic fertilizers and antibiotics;
• Cultivate strong relationships with local farmers and promote environmental sustainability;
• Sales for year 2015-16 to average between $1.5 and $2 million with 7% growth in next two years;
• Keep operational costs (labor cost, rent, and utilities) under 25% of revenue;
• Marketing budget will be 15% of revenue.

Need of Data Storage and Retrieval System at ABC Restaurant

ABC Restaurant has a core objective of making the customers’ experience memorable. Information is a critical resource for ABC Restaurant’s prosperity. The data storage and retrieval system will assist the restaurant in obtaining information concerning the customers’ expectations and exceeding them. It will not only stimulate current sales but also help in marketing through positive word-of-mouth. Having an efficient system, ABC restaurant can conduct effective data analysis to predict customers’ preferences in a very short amount of time. Therefore, ABC Restaurant can derive this competitive advantage implementing an efficient data storage and retrieval system.

Need of Online Access

By giving online access to data, ABC Restaurant will achieve the objective of facilitating the customers. Giving customers valuable insights regarding their orders in a packaged and visualized form will save them from going for more labor-intensive channels to gain information. Customers want to make informed decisions, and having access to data will really help them in it without facing the hassle of actually visiting the restaurant or calling them (Manyika et al., 2011). Therefore, the ABC Restaurant needs the facility of online access in order to gain the customer attention.

Challenges for the Present Data Storage and Retrieval System

Currently, ABC Restaurant has no proper data storage and retrieval system. Due to this, it is facing issues which directly lead to decreased profitability. These issues are listed below:

• Failure to forecast customers’ expectations. The main issue is the lack in service to customers as the restaurant fails to transform data into insights in a timely manner. Predicting customers’ needs and requirements can equip ABC Restaurant with a valuable weapon to fight in the competitive market. Due to lack of data storage and retrieval system, ABC restaurant is simply losing out on this opportunity and is handing its customers in platter to other restaurants.
• Lack of supplier profiling. As aforementioned, ABC Restaurant offers a seasonal menu. Ingredients are sourced from various regional farmers. It is difficult to keep check on such a frequently changing inventory. It also compromises on the quality assurance of the ingredients bought as there is no system to keep record of the quality of the products of each farmer.
• Faulty menu engineering. Since there is no system of storing and retrieving data, it is quite a challenging task to accurately calculate which menu item was liked by customers and which was ignored. In case ABC Restaurant had a proper data storage and retrieval system, it could have been designed its menu in accordance with customers’ likes and dislikes.

The information system for the ABC Restaurant, therefore, needs to be developed considering all mentioned challenges.

Plan of Data Quality Implementation

A rigorous quality management system is important to ensure that the quality of the data at the restaurant is up to the mark (Fan, & Geerts, 2012). A detailed plan for implementation of Data Quality Management system at ABC Restaurant has been laid down below:

• The first step will be to train the key stakeholders on data management in order for them to understand the importance of this system. They will get to know the business opportunities they are missing due to lack of this system. Secondly, data management process requires certain technical skills. Concerned employees will learn them through training.
• Defining roles and responsibilities. The second step will be to deploy responsibilities for four main roles. They include program manager and project leader, organization change agent, data analyst, and finally data steward.
• Four phase program. The last and the most important step is the implementation of four phase program.
• Data profiling. In this phase, existing data will be reviewed according to given specifications.
• Data quality. In this phase, data will be assessed for validity and accuracy. In case a problem is found in data, it will either be corrected or replaced with default values or might be eliminated altogether.
• Data integration. In this phase, data obtained from multiple internal databases will be combined, and any duplicate entries will be removed.
• Data augmentation. In this phase, value will be added to the existing data by combining it with the data obtained from third-party sources.

Identifying the Storage Technologies

Oracle database will be used for storing the information whereas the SQL server was other possible option. Oracle has been selected for the restaurant due to better language use, transaction control, and organization of objects.

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Method for Electronic Information Preservation

For the preservation of data at ABC Restaurant, the archival preservation method has been selected. Its aim is to prolong the useful life of useful research information (Roper, 2012). The two possible ways will be used for preservation, namely preventive preservation and prescriptive preservation. Preventive preservation would be applied to reduce danger of damage and to bog down the rate of worsening. Prescriptive preservation would serve as a means of detecting and giving or copying deteriorated materials to restore valuable access to the data. The preservation techniques would help the restaurant retain the valuable customer knowledge for longer periods.

Search Facility

Excellent search capabilities are essential for any data storage system because the data is only retrieved with the efficiency of the querying system (Zeng, Bao, Lee, & Ling, 2013). Since it is a restaurant database, the user will be able to search based on the item name, price and time of availability. The searching facility would provide the restaurant’s database with an opportunity to be easily accessible by the customers.

Need of Web Crawling

A web crawler is an Internet bot which methodically searches the World Wide Web, basically for the purpose of Web indexing. Crawlers are computer programs that traverse the hypertext structure in the web (Johnson, & Gupta, 2012). Two kinds of web crawlers exist, namely External and Internal. External Crawler searches through unidentified websites while Internal Crawler glances through the internal pages of the websites returned by external crawler.

Both the external and internal crawlers will be deployed for the ABC Restaurant. This will help it in keeping the data of site and binding them in a network to the next searches. Moreover, these links and web searches will be secured for future exploration and use.

Use of Content Mining

The content mining technique will be used for searching the online data storage and retrieval system of ABC Restaurant. It can be referred to the extraction or integration of any useful data, knowledge, and information from any available source. The technique has been selected for the restaurant’s database in order to ensure that a variety of user keywords will make him transferred to the restaurant’s webpage, thus increasing the audience and prospective customers.

Conclusion

This paper has explained the need and basic components of the data storage and retrieval techniques for the ABC Restaurant. Presently, the restaurant has been facing the issues, in particular no information about the patterns of customer expectations, lack of supplier information, and faulty menu engineering. The challenges faced by the restaurant due to the manual storage and retrieval systems have been identified. The details of quality planning, storage technology, information preservation, search facility, web crawling, and mining technique have been provided. The efficiently developed information system for the restaurant would improve the business performance and would result in business benefits.