Protecting and maintaining brand reputation is essential for any company. As a result, it is essential for enterprises to proactively monitor and manage all activities- operational and experiential – that influence a consumer’s overall brand experience. Ignorance involving any aspect of business operations will result in ongoing, significant consequences. It will damage a corporation’s reputation; adversely impact customers; result in operational inefficiencies, business losses and potential litigation; and even criminal penalties. It also raises the corporation’s risk of non-compliance with crucial local, state, federal and international industry regulations.
This is especially true for firms in fast-paced, competitive and highly regulated industries, including but not limited to the food, hospitality, hotel, restaurant, retail and transportation vertical markets. Typically, these organizations have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of stores, restaurants and hotels located in multiple, geographically remote locations. They must collect, aggregate and analyze a veritable data deluge in real-time. And they must respond proactively and take preventative measures to correct issues as they arise. Organizations that do business across multiple states and internationally, face other challenges. They must synchronize and integrate processes and data across the entire enterprise. Businesses must also ensure that every restaurant, hotel or retail store in the chain, achieves and maintains compliance with a long list of complex standards, health and safety laws.
ITIC’s research indicates that companies across a wide range of industries are deploying a new class of Quality Experience Management software. These solutions let businesses access the latest information on daily operations, policies, procedures and safety mechanisms in an automated fashion. They also let companies take preventative and remedial action irrespective of time, distance or physical location.
Quality Experience Management software with built-in Business Intelligence tools can deliver immediate and long-term benefits and protect the corporate brand. ITIC’s customer-based research shows that RizePoint, based in Salt Lake City, UT – with 20 years’ experience in audit compliance monitoring, reporting and correction – is the clear market leader. Its software delivers brand protection and risk mitigation with mobile and cloud capabilities, increasing efficiency and productivity.
Overview
Non-compliance is expensive, risky and unacceptable.
This is true of all companies – from the smallest organizations with fewer than 25 employees to the largest multinational global enterprises of over 10,000 employees regardless of vertical market.
Damage to the corporation’s brand and reputation due to non-compliance can be severe and protracted. In worst-case scenarios, a company’s brand may be so irreparably damaged that the firm goes bankrupt or out of business, altogether.
Firms that run afoul of requirements by authorities like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its compliance arm, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as well as international compliance and standards bodies like the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), risk severe criminal, civil and legal penalties.
These include fines, inspections/re-inspections and even jail time for company executives. The penalties may cost organizations, thousands, tens of thousands and, in extreme cases hundreds of thousands for each separate incidence or occurrence. Additionally, non-compliant corporations are at high risk of litigation from their business partners, vendors and customers at every juncture in the increasingly global supply chain. Corporations can also be sued by consumers.
The direct and indirect monetary penalties for regulatory non-compliance are high and growing ever more expensive as governments and their regulatory agencies enact new laws to safeguard their various global supply chains.
An organization’s reputation is one of its most valuable assets. Safeguarding the integrity of the corporate brand and the reliability of its daily operations via automated, Quality Experience Management software is imperative for every organization that expects to thrive and maintain the confidence and satisfaction of its customers – and comply with laws.
In the 21st century digital age of interconnected networks, no vertical industry is a standalone silo. Every market segment belongs to a macrocosm in which vendors and customers are linked by their inter-dependencies. Organizations that participate in the agri-food supply chain are also impacted by operations in a wide range of verticals including: finance; healthcare; retail; services; transportation (airlines, shipping and trucking) and weather, to name a few. In managing daily operations, companies in the food, restaurant, hospitality, hotel and retail industries must pay close attention to the goings-on in the aforementioned industries. Any issues with weather or shipping, for example could potentially disrupt business. The symbiotic and global nature of today’s business environment requires agility, scalability, innovation and automated real-time access to analyze data. Quality Experience Management software addresses the challenges of the data deluge.
Businesses that prosper in today’s complex economic environment and supply chain are increasingly turning to automated quality experience management tools that enable them to assess risks and make informed decisions. These solutions, which incorporate advanced data analytics and BI functionality, enable organizations to collect and analyze a wide variety of data. This involves monitoring ongoing daily, monthly, quarterly and annual operations, comparing and contrasting pricing and purchasing trends to gain a competitive edge over rivals, and increasing brand visibility in competitive markets. Fortunately, quality experience management tools are not only more affordable today than in the past, but they are easier to deploy, provision and use.
This emerging class of quality experience management tools obviates the need to use outmoded manual spreadsheets to perform and document the results of audits and inspections. Using spreadsheets to manually input data is complex and time-consuming. Additionally, it often fails to capture key pieces of data and manual updates are also more error-prone. By contrast, use of quality experience management software tools that incorporate BI and analytics capabilities deliver immediate and tangible business benefits across a wide variety of vertical markets. These include:
- Inspection information is now quickly and efficiently collected and shared.
- Issues and concerns are immediately shared with regional executive management and the pertinent local managers who can take immediate remedial corrective and preventative action.
- Line of business managers and C-level executives can utilize the data generated to identify key trends and compare results across the business, using audit data such as: compare/contrast data – including policies, procedures, revenue, safety issues, results of inspections and food and beverage quality across multiple locations throughout the enterprise in order to spot key trends on revenue, spending, pricing and compliance. This in turn empowers the business to make strategic business and technology decisions that can positively impact the bottom line, deliver a competitive advantage and avoid compliance issues or safety hazards before they occur.
- Improved productivity among the corporation’s workers and increased customer satisfaction.
Conclusions
Maintaining and safeguarding a brand’s reputation requires consistent adherence to brand standards. RizePoint is clearly positioned as the Quality Experience Management market leader, with accelerated customer interest and adoption, and a clear and visionary product road-map that includes specific feature value for customers in the food service, retail and hospitality industries. RizePoint makes that easier by letting clients tap into the latest mobile and cloud technology.
That technology also makes it easier for corporations to ensure regulatory compliance. Clients can then use their next-generation auditing solution as the launching pad for important new business initiatives and opportunities.
Corporate enterprises across all vertical market segments should view auditing and compliance as core requirements. They are absolutely essential to guarantee that the organization effectively monitors, manages and maintains the highest policies and procedures for its ongoing daily operations. Quality Experience Management software solutions that incorporate analytics and BI capabilities also serve as tactical tools and strategic competitive assets that assist organizations in the food, hospitality, hotel and restaurant verticals can better meet and serve the needs of every customer, business partner and supplier in their supply chains.