Is your school nutrition program using an on-premise food management system? Moving to a cloud-enabled system, like Horizon School Technology, offers distinct advantages that can transform your operation, improving and streamlining every aspect, providing a better experience for your staff and students, and helping your bottom line.
Here are three ways moving to the cloud can benefit your K-12 nutrition program.
1. Greater efficiency, accessibility, and convenience.
A unified, cloud-enabled solution is a flexible, scalable way to manage your operation. You only pay for the modules you need and can add or remove them as your program evolves. HST is hosted by Amazon Web Services, so you can rest assured that your data remains private and secure. With a web-based system, you can work anywhere you have access to the internet. The system is designed to reduce errors with built-in features that simplify daily tasks and streamline the workflow. According to a study conducted by the market research company Vanson Bourne, organizations that adopted cloud services saw a 19% average increase in process efficiency.
2. Reduced costs and demand on IT.
With a cloud solution, districts of all sizes can implement the management system they need even though they may have limited IT resources. There is no need to install the system on district servers, maintain the server hardware and software, apply upgrades, or perform backups. The provider takes on the management and support of the software, and the solution is typically delivered on a subscription basis rather than an outright purchase. Many school nutrition departments lack a dedicated IT staff to help manage their technology. HST dramatically reduces the time, expense, and support required to implement a state-of-the-art school nutrition platform, allowing you to focus on your main priorities of serving nutritious, convenient, and affordable meals to students.
3. Simplified, improved inventory management.
Horizon’s Mobile Inventory is the next generation of inventory management software, designed to empower employees and simplify workflows by letting people work where the work is. It connects securely to HST, eliminating paper inventory counts and ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and data integrity. Enter counts anywhere you have inventory — even freezers without internet connectivity. The app runs on Android and iOS devices.
Today’s K-12 school nutrition programs are facing challenges more than ever before, such as short lunch times, keeping participation up, staffing shortages, supply chain issues, and parent communication. HST is purposefully designed to address these challenges and make all aspects of managing school nutrition operations easier. HST provides an intuitive, unified solution for every component of your school nutrition program, including point of sale, online payments, student eligibility, menu planning and nutritional analysis, inventory, and ordering.
Not sure if HST would benefit your foodservice operation? Take our free self-assessment to find out. The simple questionnaire can help you determine how accessible and reliable your current processes are and if you’d benefit from Horizon’s cloud-enabled solution. As always, feel free to reach out to our veteran account management team if you would prefer a real-time discussion.
