It’s October.

Can you feel the buzz in the air?

The year—just like every other year—brought us new (or improved) technologies. As restaurateurs, it’s likely that you come into contact with them only as buzzwords that don’t really make a lot of sense to you. That’s as it should be. Technology trends, at least the ones that gather all the spotlight, are often the province of big, big companies with big, big IT budgets who can afford to make groundbreaking, game-changing, paradigm-shifting mega-million dollar investments in technology.

While that might apply to the largest of restaurant chains, it doesn’t apply to the majority of restaurant owners trying to maintain profitability in one, or a few, operations.

But it also doesn’t mean you’re entirely out of the picture. The concepts, if not the complexity, behind those technologies is very relevant to your business. While you likely have no need to replace your existing server farms with high-performance, virtualized converged infrastructure, you still want to take advantage of and derive value out of the principles behind these new technologies.

To that end, I thought I’d share some of the most popular of those buzzwords, describe what they are, and then talk about how they can be applied to your operation.

Big Data Analysis

We all hear about Big Data. Companies today generate gigabytes of data in all manners and forms: text and videos and so on. But that’s not what they really mean

when they talk about Big Data. It’s not the generation of data, it’s the analysis of that data that makes Big Data valuable.

Now, you likely don’t have to deal with massive storage arrays and mega terabytes of data—but you do have to make sure you’re collecting all the data you should and that you’ve got the tools to help analyze it to the greatest extent possible. A quality POS provides not just basic reporting and not just advanced reporting, but customizable reporting where you can look at the data any way you want and derive actionable insights from the massive amount of information stored in your POS on your sales, your customers, your costs, your productivity and speed of service..

Hybrid Cloud

This describes a lot of different kinds of architectures, all of which have some mix of public cloud (like AWS), private cloud, and on-premise systems.

You may be in a hybrid cloud yourself today. For instance, you might be integrating a SaaS workforce management system with your POS. You might be adding industry information from a service to improve your analytics. Maybe you’re using Cloud storage. If you’re not including hybrid components today, it’s likely that you will be soon.

Third Platform

The first platform was the old mainframe computers—think monster IBM machines. The second platform was what’s most common today: client/server systems where lots of PCs share information from a central server. The third platform introduces mobility into the equation—which in turn brings along social media and more.

Pay attention to this: you will be running the Third Platform. Why? Because your customers are going to demand it. They’re going to want to connect with you from any device, wherever they are. They’re going to want to share their experience at your restaurant on their social platforms. And you’re going to want to find a way to integrate all that into your sales reporting and analytics.

Omnichannel

Where there’s a third platform, the omnichannel can’t be far behind. An omnichannel brings together live, mobile, online, telephone and all other interactions into one place.

Here’s a simple QSR example that shows you how the omnichannel operates. Imagine you’re in the middle of placing a takeout order over your cell phone and—for whatever reason—the phone line goes dead. In an omnichannel environment, you can move over to the web, or to a landline and pick right up where you left off: midway through the order. This also means that you can now evaluate all your data from all your channels in a single integrated analysis.

Internet of Things

There has been an Internet of Things for a long time: Internet-enabled parking meters, refrigerators, pill bottles and more. Today, it’s starting to heat up as consumer devices—for instance, exercise monitors and smart watches—become more and more Internet enabled.

Sooner than you think, your customers are going to want to make reservations, and even pay you, from (just to mention one example) their wristwatches. Think about being ahead of the curve on this one. Early, modest investments can bring high brand value here.

Biometrics

Major companies today are using advanced biometrics—think iris recognition and fingerprints—to better manage their staff and better secure their property and systems.

This is one technology that doesn’t require a huge investment—fingerprint and iris scanners are relatively low-ticket items. The value they bring is significant: from better managing staff clock in (you can’t buddy punch biometrics), to improving security over your system, to providing an absolute audit trail for every system authorization and access.

Putting the Buzz to Work

Major technology shifts are always intended to do a single thing: make operations simpler, more profitable, and more valuable. And while you likely can’t (and really shouldn’t) take on massive IT investments, you can take on the ideas they’re based on, and drive improvements to the way you operate.