The Centralized Data Management (CDM) feature of Aloha Enterprise.com empowers you with the management of data from a central location, thus significantly simplifying your restaurant operations. It also eliminates duplicate data entry of POS menu items, promotions, comps, and other data, which decreases the chance for error, because with CDM, the data is entered only once by the central site user, and then sent via the Internet to the store sites that need the update. (View CDM System Requirements.)

CDM provides the ability to differentiate between corporate-owned and store-owned data, allowing for shared ownership between corporate and the store. For example, employee data — such as adding and terminating an employee — is considered store-owned, but sales items — such as menu changes and price changes — can be designated as corporate owned, or perhaps "shared", meaning the data can be updated by either the corporate user, or the store site user. With CDM, data ownership is entirely up to headquarters, and how much control they want to have over company POS data.

The CDM set of tools enables corporate entities to control all aspects of a POS database from a central location, and distribute updates to the stores. Using the centralized model allows customers to eliminate redundant entry of critical data such as tax or menu item setup — encouraging managers to attend to other mission-critical aspects of their business, such as servicing the guests, food preparation, and training employees. 

CDM can be purchased as a stand-alone product or integrated with the Enterprise.com suite of products. CDM as a standalone product requires the company to provide its own mechanism for the data distribution. The powerful CDM suite is built-in to the Aloha Enterprise.com platform, which allows Enterprise users to seamlessly distribute all data updates to each store, using highly redundant and well-proven Internet communications software.

CDM Features

Central distribution of data changes provides a mechanism to add, modify or delete any type of POS record, down to the actual field level information – all from a central location! The fieldlevel updates are an essential part of CDM, as it allows headquarters to designate an Item as shared, where the manager might have access to change printer router information, but corporate can still change the Item Name or the Pricing information without disrupting the printer changes the manager may have specified for the item.

Web Tools give you access to your data fast, from anywhere, no matter what time or day it is. Enterprise.com's easy-to-use web-based CDM tools are for you! Area managers or franchise owners with access can easily send their stores (and only their stores) quick updates such as pricing or printer routing changes. Like other CDM updates, they can send these updates in advance, and the POS will be updated behind the scenes to store managers, on the update's effective date.

Store Lockout provides a highly secure mechanism to lock stores out of specific records, such as standard menu items that are printed on the physical menu, or tax information that has been specified by headquarters as "corporate owned". In-store software allows view-only access to corporate owned data. Only the authorized headquarters user can change corporate-owned data. 

Events provides the ability to create POS tasks to change pricing, tax settings, printer routings, and more – from the central site. CDM Events are simple to use, but very powerful in that they can be specified to kick into action by the time of day, day of week, or span of days. Corporate Events, like other data updates, are set up by headquarters, and are implemented on the day that corporate has specified as the "effective date". Events can be sent to just a single store, all stores, or only a specific group of stores that need the update. They're great for tax updates!