Optimus Information, a technology services company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, provides outsourcing solutions to mid-sized software companies and enterprises. Using a mix of local and offshore resources, Optimus uses its Outsourcing-as-a-Service (OaaS) platform to augment its customers’ technical expertise, accelerate execution, and reduce cost.

Due to its expertise in Microsoft products and solutions, Optimus is a Microsoft gold certified competency partner.

Powering a scalable point-of-sale system

Retail-focused Squirrel POS Systems will tell you they are not in the technology business—they are in the guest experience business. Their POS platform, which has run on Microsoft technology for over 30 years, is a leader serving brands like: Wolfgang Puck, Mystic Hotels, and Casinos, The Keg, Nic’s of Beverly Hills, White Spot, Tribeca Grill, and thousands more.

Squirrel customers are restaurant owners. From chains to single locations, take-out shops to Michelin-starred establishments. Squirrel customers comprise an elite group of business owners who need to be efficient in order to deliver quality experiences while maintaining profitability.

Turning tables for restaurant profitability

At the end of the day, what matters most to restaurant owners is how quickly they can turn tables while still delivering an amazing guest experience. They want to optimize operations, make their servers more efficient, and know immediately if a customer is dissatisfied to ensure they can address any issues while the customer is in the restaurant.

The new Squirrel Cloud POS solution reduces labor costs and makes serving staff more efficient while delivering innovative experiences to customers.

With their new cloud solution, Squirrel now has the agility to add new features and services far more quickly. They can now integrate with new ISV offerings such as Skip the Dishes or Azure IoT Hub to support their Smart Watch application—an app that monitors and reports on the health of devices for service or maintenance. With embedded Power BI, Squirrel can also provide its customers with greater insight than ever before—often in real time to ensure restaurant owners and managers can take corrective action as issues occur before the guest leaves the restaurant.

Restaurant owners want better insight, increased self-service, and expanded features

While most POS systems are on-premises desktop applications with traditional client-server architecture in their software design, new prospects and existing customers are now demanding more agile POS services, that can provide more features at a lower total cost of ownership.

Existing and prospective customers were thrilled when Squirrel introduced the next generation Squirrel Cloud Restaurant Management System at the Multi-Unit Restaurant Technology Conference (MURTEC) in Las Vegas. Many were excited to see an industry leader deliver a groundbreaking, next-generation cloud platform that was secure, scalable, and feature-rich.

Xamarin buy pushes go button

When Microsoft announced they were buying Xamarin in 2016, Optimus and Squirrel knew it was the game changer they needed to begin building a new cloud-based platform. A joint team was identified and resources from Optimus’ Vancouver and Noida offices began to work on a Proof of Concept in late 2016 alongside Squirrel’s IT team.

Optimus Value Add—Azure Test Harness and more

Optimus and Squirrel’s technical team worked side by side throughout the application development process, assisting with prototyping, providing feedback, and ultimately helping to deliver the new Squirrel Cloud platform.

Testing was a big part of why the Squirrel POS application was able to move into production on time. The Azure Test Harness is a testing and automation tool that Optimus has configured using Open Source components that they offer freely to any customer. They used this tool throughout the development of the Squirrel POS application in order to ensure the project wrapped on time and that the application met Squirrel’s high bar for quality.

Optimus employed SQL on Azure to assist in data retrieval and management. Sign in for the system is controlled by Microsoft Entra ID while the front-of-the-house section of the app is built using Xamarin.

Customized reports come standard

Selectable tiles can be dragged and dropped so that Squirrel customers can adjust their dashboards to reflect exactly what they want to see. Under the legacy system, customers were highly limited in what they could see in reports, due directly to the limitations of the legacy architecture the old system offered. If a client wanted a custom report, Squirrel would have to spend an entire day coding before going into their client’s place of business to physically install and update the software. Since it was a legacy product, a change for one client meant all the other clients had to accept the change as well.

Because the new POS is cloud-based and uses Power BI, a Squirrel customer can customize their dashboard at any time. Further, Squirrel only has to deploy any changes or updates once to ensure every customer is automatically updated to the latest version.

Vipul Kulshrestha explained that the Squirrel app used Microsoft technologies from the Applications and Infrastructure, Data and AI product shelves, making it an incredibly powerful and completely scalable application with future data collection capabilities. “This app could also fall in the Workforce Modernization space. In the trendier restaurants, the serving staff is using this latest technology because the owners don’t want to worry about any specialized hardware or software as they did with earlier POS systems. Basically, we’ve converted the whole POS solution into a service.”

The total cost of ownership of the solution has come down significantly, and as a result:

• Squirrel can now deploy the POS solution far more quickly compared to the hardware and software set-ups of current on-premise POS systems.
• Customers can set themselves up and make changes when they want to, reducing errors, and reducing the impact on Squirrel’s technical teams.
• Squirrel can assure its new customers of fast deployment turnaround times.
• Squirrel has the ability to customize instances of the system to meet customers’ unique needs.
• Restaurants can now support employee bring your own device (BYOD)—servers are hired and on day one the app is on their phone, HR information is securely updated, allowing them to use their phone to track shift assignments, and even to take orders—it’s that simple.
• 30 percent savings over competitive traditional, on-premises POS solutions.

Future Azure consumption

Optimus estimates that Azure consumed revenue per restaurant will be approx. USD300 per month—with Squirrel currently working with over 40,000 restaurants, it is just scratching the surface of what’s possible.