Managing a fractured tech stack

For hospitality enterprises looking to grow and scale, driving operational efficiency is a crucial success factor, with many businesses relying on their tech stack to get there. A tech stack consists of various front-end and back-end technologies that work together to optimise operations. For quick-service restaurants and full-service restaurants, this could involve streamlining how their staff take card payments, whether through faster card machines or by using a range of payment processing tools to accept card payments – either in person or online.

What is a fractured tech stack?

A fractured tech stack refers to when a business uses technology systems that aren’t integrated. This can lead to inefficiencies and challenges – especially as businesses grow and their technology needs evolve beyond their current capabilities.

Where Dojo comes in

Dojo is committed to fueling business growth through innovative and accessible technology. That’s why we've partnered with Chris Fletcher, presenter and editor of the Tech on Toast podcast. Throughout the year, Dojo experts have joined Chris in a series of collaborations to share insights on how cutting-edge technology can help hospitality businesses level up.

Insights from industry leaders

In our second episode of the series, Chris caught up with Chris Jolliffe, Head of Enterprise Sales at Dojo, and Guy Scott-South, CTO from Pizza Hut. Together, they discussed how restaurant operators can manage a fractured tech stack, sharing insights on:

• Best-in-class vs all-in-one solutions
  The debate between best-in-class and all-in-one tech solutions is ongoing. Pizza Hut’s Guy Scott-South discusses the challenge of modernising legacy systems, while Dojo’s Chris Jolliffe stresses the importance of aligning tech solutions with business needs.
  
• Project management and change readiness
  Clear project management and readiness for change are crucial. Guy points out the complexities of tech integration in a resistant industry, and Chris underscores the role of vendors in guiding businesses through these transitions.
  
• Data-driven decision-making
  Data is key in driving business decisions. Pizza Hut is focusing on modernising its data approach, while Chris highlights the need for seamless data solutions to help businesses make informed choices.

Tune in to the full episode or take a look at the full transcript below.  

Transcript: Rebuilding and managing a fractured tech stack in Hospitality

Introduction: Visualising the tech stack

Chris Fletcher: We're talking today about rebuilding your tech stack or looking at a fractured tech stack. When you're in these conversations, we're talking a lot to restaurant operators, and we do what we call a tech stack light. This is where we go and do a small drawing of their tech stacks so they can visualise what they've got. Here, we always come across the conversation all in one versus best in class. 

All-in-one vs best-in-class: Perspectives from Pizza Hut and Dojo

I'd love to understand, from Pizza Hut's point of view, Guy, and your point of view, Chris, where you stand on that conversation, and what you think tech stack means. 

Guy Scott-South: For a business like ours, we've been operating restaurants since 1978 in the UK, it's this nice idea of having an all-in-one solution. The reality is, we have systems from 20 years ago alongside modern systems. So there's a huge amount of technical debt in the organisation, which makes it very challenging to move away into one solution. For us, given that we've got central resources, generally we have a bit of a mixed bag, so we try to look for the best-in-breed in different areas. Then we have the challenge of trying to integrate all of those. 

Chris F: We were talking before about a business case. So if you want to change POS or workforce management, you've got to prove to someone that:

• A, it's worth doing
• B, there'll be an ROI on it
• C, that operations can handle that.

The challenge of change in the hospitality industry

Guy: Absolutely. I think restaurant operators don't particularly like change, they get used to doing things and technology isn't necessarily core to what most restaurants do. We're selling food, we're making food. Technology can help, but the operators themselves tend to not want to move away from what they know because there's a distraction from the core part of the business.

Chris F: What about you, Chris? You were previously with Kobas and now you're at Dojo, what have you come across in terms of that conversation?

Chris Jolliffe: Yes, I've fortunately been in a position where I've sold the best-in-breed products, worked for Tevalis for seven-and-a-half years, and then sold the all-in-one solution when I worked with Kobas. Now I'm working with Dojo selling the best-in-class in payments. I've seen it from all those different angles and I've been on Guy’s coattails for about five years, so we're now finally working together with Dojo.

Balancing buyer requirements and technology solutions

From my perspective, it depends on the buyer – what their requirements are and where that true value proposition is when they're looking to acquire tech. So there is a marketplace for the best-in-breed, because you may have testaments or referenceability in the integrations that you can offer that suit the major requirements for that operator. Similarly, I think from a buyer's perspective, sometimes it's easier to buy an all-in-one solution because it’s seen as the holy grail of everything they need. They can pay one invoice, and it's done. I prefer the best-in-breed approach. I think it's harder and takes longer to embed a solution, but it does ultimately give you a better end product, whereas the all-in-one has a definite place in the market for different-size operators.

Overcoming resistance to change

Guy: It's a really good point about central teams not wanting to change as well. Going through the process of changing suppliers for these big technology companies takes months of work to get it right. There are negotiations and contracts, and, I think that's the reason lots of people stay with the same technology for a long time. Our POS system is 20 years old now.

Chris F: People like me often talk about A/B testing, where we just try it on one site, in one location, and then roll it out. But as you mentioned, we won't dive into the costs. However, you did mention what you were paying before with your previous provider. You’re getting a good deal now. Operations are running smoothly, and things are okay. So, the motivation on your end to make such a change is understandably minimal.

Guy: It is difficult until you get to a point where the risk of maintaining that old technology becomes too great. It can sometimes be challenging having that conversation with boards about what the cost of the risk is versus the moving forward, and the cost of a new technology and implementation. 

Key considerations for restaurant operators

Chris F: What questions should restaurant operators consider when thinking about making a change?

I'll start with you, Chris, because you've sat in a lot of these conversations to make sure they're getting the best out of, A, that deal and B, what they're looking down the road at.

Chris J: It's really important, we always try to take the buyer on a fulfilled journey. You can sell to anybody ultimately, but if you're not fulfilling what that prospect requires, then you're not doing your job properly and ultimately you'll get found out later down the line. So from my perspective, it's truly understanding the why:

•  Why are we here? 
• What are you wanting from this interaction? 
• What do you want that output to be? 

The importance of clear requirements and honest sales

It's a salesperson's job to demonstrate that their requirements can be fulfilled by your product. It's also really important, from a buyer's perspective, to interrogate that, and ask what does that mean? Your perception of fulfilment might be different to the product that they're offering. 

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, which does take time and is arduous, is fundamentally important. Especially for the seller because otherwise, you're going to end up having a bad relationship down the line. It's really important for the buyer because if you get it right, you have the product that you need straight off the bat. And look, if it isn't a right fit for us in particular, we'll walk away, because we might have that product later and we might have a better fit later. If you provide the best products and service, you're gonna get a customer and retain them for longer, whereas other customers will become apparent from other suppliers that you're losing to.

Challenges in vendor management

Guy: To pick up on that as well, it's really important to get your requirements from across the organisation very clear before you go into the process of looking at whether the vendors can fulfil them. Sometimes people forget about the requirements of someone in the finance team, or a particular stakeholder who isn't necessarily core to the project, and it can come back to bite you later. Be really clear on what the requirements are. Make sure everyone who might need to be involved is involved.

And then, as Chris said, really interrogating the salespeople when they promise that they can deliver on your requirements. Because I don't know how many times I've been through it, where you go through a sales process and people will say: “Yes, we can do that, we can do that. It's on our roadmap.” It's a classic one. I'd always say, that if there are too many things that are on the roadmap, just have a serious think about whether the product is going to deliver what you want. Because sales guys like to say this. It lures you in by promising features that might not meet your expectations. We've found several situations in the past where we've had to pull out of the process because they haven't been able to deliver on what they've said. That's no good for anyone. It's a huge amount of wasted time for both parties.

Understanding the sales process: Matching needs and solutions

Chris J: Exactly. That just mirrors what I was saying at the beginning, which is that it is important for both sides. You can't win everything. You just physically can’t, and everyone's product is different. Everyone's requirement is niche. Every operator will have a different go-to-market strategy, which requires different tech to sit behind it. And not everybody can fit those needs.

The buyer-seller dynamic in smaller businesses

Chris F: I spoke to William Connors, who's the CTO at Noble Group, about three years ago at the same show, and the way he summed this up was, you've got the operator saying: “I've got a problem, I've got to fix it”. Then you've got a salesperson saying: “I've got a sale, I'm going to nail it”. And then somewhere in the middle, it all goes wrong. I think that's basically what you've been describing there – there are two very different needs meeting together, and somewhere in the middle, they need to match. 

Chris F: Guy, when you are rolling tech out, you've done the interrogation on the salespeople. You're buying it and onboarding. What steps do you take with Pizza Hut to make sure that you're following that through till the end, without encountering all the problems you discussed?

Guy: It's key to have clear project management on both sides so that there's a point of accountability. Projects that go really well tend to have a strong project manager on the business side. We've just been through this with Dojo and had great project management. It's stood out.

It makes a huge difference because you want to focus on carrying on running the restaurant. You don't want all the challenges of implementation, so the good suppliers take all that pain away from you. There's all the standard stuff of making sure that the training's fit for purpose for the operators. You keep disruption to a minimum. Stakeholders in the above restaurant functions are kept on board throughout. 

Chris J: On the project management side, it should start during the discovery phase of the commercial propositioning. I say to my team all the time that it's about every engagement you have with the customer. You've got insights on what the project's going to look like, and at every stage of that process, you need to be in discovery: the proposal, the negotiations, or the contracting. You need to reiterate where we're at, what expectations we believe they have, and what allows them to layer in their expectations, and then start building that pack up as you go. By the time you get to the point where a contract is signed off and it's negotiated, you can hand over a nice, sweet little package to the implementation team so they can drive that home and deliver what's needed. That really helps when covering things that we've discussed in the past – it's all catalogued.

I've known Guy for a long time, and when we talked about the journey so far, he said: “It's been really good. You've been handholding me through it all. Payments have been clear, and what I'm getting makes sense.”

Guy: To add to that, in recent years, central teams have been less resourced than ever before. Our team is a lot smaller than it was pre-pandemic, so one of the main reasons people don't like to change is that it's a distraction from their day job, running these projects. That's where it's really helpful to have that support from a supplier because it lets you go on with everything else that you need to do. We don't have spare project managers, so it's taken from someone's day job in the organisation to be able to do that.

Chris F: How does it work in a smaller business? This might be more for you when you were selling to smaller clients at Kobas because they don't have the luxury of a “Guy”. A lot of the people we work with at Tech on Toast, those with 15 sites or fewer, have an operations team, or sometimes the CFO ends up dealing with this. 

How does it work for businesses in terms of handholding and making sure they get the same experience as an enterprise?

Chris J: We call that the “buyer-owner” relationship. The buyer, the owner, the administrator, the accounts, everything. What they're looking for when they're acquiring products is time-saving. They want to know that the particular supplier is going to get the system in on time. Is it going to be with the least friction possible? Is it going to work? That's where referenceability is huge. Whenever we are working with a prospect, we always say to our customers: “Look, I'm going to tell you what you want to hear”. I'm going to position this deck based on what you want to hear. 

Leveraging references in decision-making

Speak to our customers who have a similar operational style to you, and get that feedback from them. That is the only truth that you're going to hear in terms of true raw feedback. Ask:

• How is the implementation? 
• How is the ongoing support? 
• How is the product? 
• Does it fit your needs and purpose? 
• How do we do it? 

We tailor it because there are different cost bases. When you've got someone with 150 locations versus one location, there's a different cost in terms of implementation. We just make it fit for purpose. Ultimately, the project team intrinsically knows how to deal with that owner-operator versus how to deal with a conglomerate or a big corporate business. And that's something that's innate within the function, not necessarily within the product. 

The role of word-of-mouth in tech adoption

Chris F: We did a survey last year at Tech on Toast and 82% of operators who we surveyed said they would buy tech based on someone's reference. They might come down here and have a browse, maybe they'd have a look around, but really they're buying off their mates. Is that what you've experienced over the years?

Guy: I think that's true. For a smaller organisation, if you're doing everything, running the business, where you're like the ops manager for a small group of 5-15, you might not have the time to come down to one of these shows to do that. If you've got a problem in the organisation, the hospitality business is quite tight-knit and people move within hospitality. Generally, if you've worked in the business for a while, you're going to know a whole host of people in different organisations who have used different pieces of software. Word of mouth is the main way things get done.

Chris J: I think that the owner-operator, up to 15, 20 sites, heavily rely on referenceability to make a decision. If their mate has it, they'll have it. But when you're talking to more corporate organisations, a reference might get you to the table, but there's no way you'll get the gig without substance.

The tender process and change management in larger organisations

Guy: We tend to do a sort of tender-like process for all of our suppliers. It's not a formal or massive tender process. We will look at different people, usually based on recommendations, then send our requirements out in an RFP and go from there.

Chris F: As you mentioned change management a couple of times, do you think we'll see more project managers appearing in hospitality businesses in the future?

Guy: I've been with Pizza Hut for 20 years now, so my experience is somewhat limited. But I think that there aren't enough change programs in our IT department to justify having full-time project managers. You can get generalists who understand technology and understand operations, who can work across the organisation. I think that role is becoming more and more useful.

The evolving role of project management

Chris J: We've seen massive consolidation of staffing with more corporate organisations. They don't have the manpower that they once used to have. Bodies are being accounted for, as to why they need to be there. As you've mentioned, the change program for a project manager in IT just doesn't warrant a full-time kind of role. I think there will be a lot more third parties that are consulting on operational and tech change with a view of them working with them. You'll see a shift, there'll be a more consultative approach to buying, but ultimately the decision will lay with the people that are embedded within the business. So yes.

Data-driven decision-making: Challenges and opportunities

Chris F: We wanted to move to data where we've got some time left. You mentioned legacy tech, I'm guessing you're still getting lots of data from that stack, and you mentioned that you were trialling kiosks in certain locations recently. How is data now driving Pizza Hut as you move forward into this new digital era? 

Guy: We've actually had a pretty well-established data warehouse for the best part of 20 years. I know some brands don't. It is quite old now, we're in the process of modernising that. That's been a big project for us. But you're right, there's lots of data coming from all sources. We've got our mobile ordering, bring-your-own-device-style ordering. We've got kiosks. We've got the web. The challenge now is creating a single customer view where we don't necessarily have a logged-in journey for everyone. It's getting the information that we can, which might include some payment information down the line. We're working with Chris (from Dojo) to understand how we can use that information to better understand customers. It drives everything that we do. When we do tests in different restaurants, the new menu, or we do pricing tests, we need to be able to analyse accurate data from the POS system and kiosk, et cetera.

Dojo’s data strategy: Empowering the experience economy

Chris F: We were at your head office the other day meeting your founders, which is really cool, they were talking about the heart behind what you guys do, that data is driving everything. There's a thirst for it now from the operators, that they need this data to help make better decisions on smaller resource teams. Are you enabling that now for these people?

Chris J: Yeah, I believe that data within our industry is heavily underutilised. We sit on lots of data, lots of insights, lots of really valuable stuff. We don't share it. We lose it when we change POS providers. Ultimately, we don't benefit from having all that information, which is quite nuts. From Dojo's perspective, we're empowering the experience economy. We're connecting the dots between trying to entice your customers into the restaurant, giving them a hassle-free or invisible payment experience, making sure that they enjoy that experience – be it in the venue or from the payment's perspective – and then trying to bring them back around.

From Dojo's perspective, you're going to see a massive data play within the CRM, the payments and tokenisation. Then bringing all that back around to create that flywheel effect. That's going to come sooner than you think, because when you're in a position like ours, where one in eight transactions in the highstreet go through one of our terminals, you're in a really powerful position and you can harness that power and give that back to the operators.

Overcoming data challenges in legacy systems

Guy: One of the challenges we talked about, is best-in-breed versus an all-in-one solution.

Data is really important here and we've got lots of different suppliers. As I said, we've got our own data warehouse. It's amazing how many suppliers are still dumping flat files onto FTP servers, rather than having a modern data transfer approach. I think there's lots of catching up to do in the industry. You see lots of products that look really shiny on the front end and they've spent a lot of money getting the front end right. But there are lots of companies where you think they're tech-based, but what's lying behind that, if you want to get the data, is really quite old and quite challenging to use. Then you build a lot of technical debt. The transfer of files, daily files, you may miss one occasionally, and then you're chasing up to try and find it. So there's still a lot of work to do in AMP data.

Chris J: That comes onto the value proposition because we don't see value in it right now. It's not front and centre of a lot of tech companies. 

Marketing vs reality: The hidden complexity of tech solutions

Chris F: Yeah, it's quite marketing-heavy. You're talking about the vendors' approach, which can often be driven more by marketing. As you said, it looks great on the surface. And then when you dig a bit deeper, some of the style isn't there. I was talking to an operator the other day, they've got 25 sites. They are having to do manual downloads from six different systems daily. Their payroll actually required three different downloads from three different sources on a weekly and monthly basis, which is human error getting involved as well as the tech. I think there's a lot of untangling to do.

Chris J: That's where an all-in-one would benefit nicely because that pain is insurmountable.

Human error in data management

Chris F: I called it the Shirley syndrome. We had a lady called Shirley, who used to do payroll for us every week. She was amazing, but she really struggled with the data. She struggled downloading it, and made a lot of errors – not her fault, just because she's not a data processor.

So she's handling all this data. I'd say that 20% of these brands, hospitality operators, have a “Shirley” in their office, potentially doing that download every day and possibly making errors on people's pay, which is the single most important thing, right?

Guy: Yeah, it's really easy to do as well. There's been a move over the past five or ten years to try and automate more of finance, but most big legacy finance departments are still quite backwards when it comes to data management.

Chris F: At Carluccio's, I think our finance department was bigger than our ops team at one point. I always had a problem with that.

Chris J: They get a bigger budget, though, don't they?

The responsibility of tech vendors in implementation

Chris F: What is the tech vendor's responsibility when it comes to selling in and onboarding and making sure that what you said they'd get, they're going to get?

Chris J: It's taking that prospect through that journey. Everyone has targets. Everyone wants to grow. Everyone wants business. But you've got to get the right customer. Not every customer is right for your business at that point in time. You might not have the software for it. They might be too big for you. Ultimately, if at every stage of the process, while you're going through that acquisition, you're setting expectations – documenting what's been discussed, what you need from them, and what they need from you – you'll be in a position at the end where everyone has a clear understanding of what needs to be delivered and what will be delivered. That way, you'll start the relationship off in the right way.

Similarly, if you go through that process and you get to a dead end say: “We're at a crossroads now, we can't do what you need and we can't give you what you want”, you can leave a really good lasting impression on that buyer. They will come back knocking or they will entertain you when you go knocking later down the line with that solution to that problem.

The importance of avoiding mismatched relationships

Guy: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. When that happens and both parties end up falling back on the contract, it just ends up in a no-win situation unless you're a lawyer.  I think that's a very grown-up approach that not all vendors take. You don't want to be stuck in a relationship that isn't working for either party.

There may be some short-term gains in terms of money, but reputationally, it's quite damaging. We talk about it being a small industry. If you treat people badly, you do get found out in the long run.

Looking ahead: The future of Pizza Hut

Chris F: What does the future hold for Pizza Hut in the near future?

Guy: We're investing more in kiosks. At the start of the pandemic, we introduced digital ordering for the phone for the first time, and we've maintained about 60% of people still ordering that way. For a lot of customers, it relieves those pain points of waiting to find a waiter, wanting to order a second beer, and wanting to pay your bill at the end. We still found that those people who didn't want to use their phones were more likely to engage with kiosks because you can use a traditional card to pay if you want to. It's a bigger screen. It's fun for children as well. We're still a very children-focused brand. That's definitely the future. 

Balancing technology and hospitality

Rising costs of labour have gone up 10, 11% this year. It's going to go up. It's a reality. Margins are already thin in the industry, and we are having to find ways to introduce technology that removes waste from the system while allowing us to focus on the things that are really important. So making sure that the servers that we have left are really focused on the real hospitality bits – like the greeting, the checking in, and having a nice conversation with people – we don't want to lose that with technology. We need to find a nice symbiosis.

Dojo’s growth in the enterprise market

Chris F: Chris, tell us all about Dojo.

Chris J: From our point of view, we're getting into the enterprise world quite heavily now. We've dominated the SME space for quite some time. We've got a lot of market share there.

We're currently at about 11% market share in the enterprise space right now.

By the end of this year, we'll be reaching 25% of that market share. But we're going to be doing that as an organisation that builds products in a customer-led way, delivering the right products so that people can afford and get our products.

Chris F: Thank you very much.

And that’s a wrap on managing a fractured tech stack.

Key takeaways:

• For hospitality enterprises, a well-integrated tech stack is vital to operational efficiency.
• The choice between all-in-one solutions and best-in-class tools depends on your business’s specific needs.
• Change management is crucial – clear project management and understanding your business requirements can make or break a tech implementation.
• Data-driven decisions are key, but many businesses struggle with outdated data systems that hinder progress.
• Dojo is dedicated to providing best-in-class payment processing and merchant services to streamline operations and enhance customer satisfaction.

Whether you're a large enterprise or a smaller business, Dojo's payment solutions are here to help. To see Dojo in action, check out our case study on how we helped a busy restaurant speed up operations with the right tech. And as your business grows, managing an expanding tech stack can also get quite challenging, often leading to a tangle of legacy systems. Our latest podcast episode dives into strategies for overcoming these hurdles, ensuring your operations remain streamlined and efficient.