Management Information Systems
Kimball’s restaurant: Business information systems
Nguyen Hai Chau
University of Engineering and Technology
Vietnam National University
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Context
The restaurant has been operating successfully for three years
Sales forecasts have steadily increased over the last three years
the growth was not so fast as to cause any “growing pains” or
problems with the Kimballs business
Michael found that during most weeks, they had reservations for
50 to 100 percent of their dining capacity
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Information flow
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Processing customer orders
Michael believes that his data analysis is accurate but it took a lot of
effort:
The servers wrote customer orders on multipart paper checks
One copy went to kitchen for meal preparation
The server tabulated totals on the original copy and gave it to
the customer when the meal was complete
The customer paid the cashier directly with cash or a credit
card. The hard copy of the check is saved
Several times a week, Michael used the paper checks to enter the
sales and table information in an Excel spreadsheet for analysis
Michael is busy with operational work, the Excel data entry and
analysis if often delayed
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Processing payments
Employees maintained their timecards manually
Each week, the timecard data was validated by Michael and sent
