Impact Of Mobile Technology On Nando’s Kitchen: A Case Study Essay.

Discuss about the Mobile Business Technology for Case Study on Nando’s?

The advancement of technology with various innovative electronics devices has allowed the people to use mobile technology more than ever. At current, there are as many mobile devices as there are a number of person’s accounts about approximately 7 million mobile connections (Hwang and Wu 2014). Along with that, with the introduction of smartphones and tablets has increased the number of internet users.

Figure 1: Official logo of Nando’s Kitchen

(Source: Nandos.co.uk. 2016)

In this particular study, Nando’s Kitchen in the United Kingdom is taken as a case study to analyze the impact of mobile technology on business.

Nando’s Kitchen in the United Kingdom was initially founded in the year 1992. Till date, it has expanded its restaurants having about 350 branches all over the country (Nandos.co.uk. 2016). In the year 2014, the pre-tax profit of the restaurant has fallen to £30.4m from £33.4m due to their in-house investment (Brown 2013). The change of ownership of the company to Richard Enthoven, South African tycoon has decreased its dividend payment to £6m from £14.2m (Brown 2013).

Figure 2: Growth of Nando’s in United Kingdom

(Source: Brown 2013)

From the above chart, it is transparent that in the year 2010 Nando’s has suffered loss due to their investment in the company. In the next four years, Nando has shown steady but continuous growth while increasing their profit three times within the scope of 3years.

For expanding their business and connect with more people, the Nando's have developed their Mobile application both for Android and iOS. The application allows easy checking of the menu, selecting order and paying the amount online (Bughin, Chui and Manyika 2013). Through this application, Nandoo’s provide its customer for easy navigation of all the restaurants along with recent news about the brand.

In spite of the various positive ideas in the application, it has failed to fulfill the objective it has been created for. The Nando’s app lacks the productivity and efficiency, especially in the Android application. According to Google Play Store reviews, there are 100,000 to 500,000 installations (Nandos.co.uk. 2016). One of the major problems in the applications is that, in the majority of Android phones, the application crashes while opening.

Discussion

The most significant need of the Nando's application is to reduce the size. To improve the profit and productivity of the business through the application, Nando must include home delivery of their food. The developer needs to work more on fixing the bugs and crash issues in the application that will mitigate a large amount of problem and will allow the customer to place their order easily (Holla and Katti 2012).

Discussion and Evaluation

The various features that should be added to the applications are swipe screen in the menu items with pictures and description of the food.

The Nando’s applications have feedback option, but the application must include customer support (Babu, Praveen and Kumar 2015). The quick responses to the feedback and instant customer support through the application will allow maintaining good relation with the customer.

Figure 4: Features in Nando’s Application

(Source: Play.google.com. 2016)

The ‘Nando’ brand needs to concentrate on improving the user interface that ensures the customer satisfaction and usability of the mobile applications (Sarkar et al. 2014). This will provide the users to tailor the Nando’s according to their taste. 

The striking features that need to be followed in the application are to keep all its features as simple as possible. The simplified log-in to the application through linked social media account like Facebook and Goggle+ will easy recovery of forgotten password (Dhore et al. 2014). Apart from that, the direct link to the social media including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will allow Nando to remain in contact with the customers through those platforms.

Since Nando Kitchen’s main objective is to fulfill its customers’ need through their food, they must include a feature that predicts the exact time customers’ order will be ready.

Adding these features to the existing Nando’s application will allow the brand to improve their business and effectiveness of the Android and iOS mobile application.

The mobile industry is rapidly changing along with new advanced technology that provides high performance and utilization of the mobile devices. A wide range of services and mobile applications are driving the mobile data usage.

Figure 5: Mobile Industry Trends in last ten years

(Source: Radio et al. 2012, pp-846)

 The new devices with the newly developed technologies are bringing the new standard to the mobile application used. The numbers of mobile technology users have increased thrice in the last five years only.

Figure 6: Sales of Mobile Phones in Five Years

(Source: Page 2014, pp- 98)

With the increase in mobile users and mobile industry at a rapid rate, the mobile industry experiences various challenges for example-

Integrating the mobile application with the business needs.

Managing secure and authorized access by the users in the mobile application (Muccini, Francesco and Esposito 2012).

Staying up-to-date with the latest technology and regardless the operating system and type of the device.

Mobile Industry Trends, Challenges, and Applications

In order to keep up with the trends, businesses are utilizing the mobile technology to enhance their business and promote their services. The technology enables the flexibility, speed, and accuracy of the business need to any mobile applications.

The uses of mobile phones along with its advanced application have increased at a dramatic rate. One of the most vital features of mobile applications is “Push Notifications”. Push Notifications allows the company sent notifications or messages to the customers even when the android application is not open in their electronic devices (Battard and Mangematin 2013). The “Mobile Payment” features in the application allow the user of safe and easy payment through the application virtually from anywhere and anytime.

The “Social Integration” features of the application allow the customer to share the elements and news of the application in social media. The "Map integration and Geo Location" in the application allows the company target the right customer at the right place. Furthermore, this feature allows the customer to find nearby restaurants through the application thus reducing the time on searching.

Another vital feature that benefits the company by attracting a number of customers to use their services is "GPS Coupons" (Hwang and Wu 2014). This feature enables the customers to apply different coupons and rewards while placing an order. Apart from that, all these advanced features in the mobile applications allow in maintaining good customer relation and customer satisfaction.

Productivity is a multidimensional concept that has a huge impact on the business and output of the company (Sarwar and Soomro 2013). The utilization of the mobile technology provides a strategic advantage to the business.

The mobile application produces a virtual version of the services and business allowing the customers to get the best of business products and services. Creating a mobile application allows the business to remain with the client at anyplace and anytime.

The mobile application provides direct marketing schemes and channel to do business. The mobile application allows creating good customer-business relationship (Dhore et al. 2014). The mobile applications allow to business to approach the customer in a more effective way.

The most vital impact of the mobile application is towards the increase of revenue for the business. The value added services and rewards motivates the customer to use frequently the application and access the business services. 

Furthermore, the mobile application provides cost effective business strategies. Creating a mobile application for the business allows the company to advertise the product directly to its customers through the mobile application.

Impact of Mobile Technology Features

Figure 7: Pizza Hut Tracking Features

(Source: Play.google.com. 2016)

 This has made the Nando’s mobile application unique in all respect. Pizza Hut has their own application with similar features but provides the features for home delivery through the mobile application (Holla and Katti 2012). This makes the Pizza Hut application more popular than Nando’s Kitchen.

Another popular application in UK is the Burger King app that provides the user with exact distance and location of its restaurant through Google Maps. The Burger Kind app also has wallet free payment options that enable the customers to pay through Virtual Card.

Figure 8: Store Location Features with Distance and Maps Direction of Burger King

(Source: Play.google.com. 2016)

 This feature is lacking in Nando’s Kitchen and introducing this particular feature will improve the overall application regarding customer satisfaction and application efficiency (Babu, Praveen, and Kumar 2015).

Conclusion

Mobile technology with Android and iOS based applications of business or organization act as strategic tools for improving the economy of the company. The mobile application of Nando's Kitchen is made in this study while critically evaluating the impact of mobile technology on business. Therefore, it can be concluded that mobile technology plays an important role in shaping the business requirement and procedure for a company.

References

Babu, G.Y., Praveen, P. and Kumar, D.V., 2015. Intelligent Recommendation E-menu using android application in restaurant. International Journal of Research, 2(7), pp.411-416.

Battard, N. and Mangematin, V., 2013. Idiosyncratic distances: Impact of mobile technology practices on role segmentation and integration.Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 80(2), pp.231-242.

Brown, M. (2013). Nando's nation: the chicken that conquered Britain. [online] Telegraph.co.uk. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/restaurants/9902231/Nandos-nation-the-chicken-that-conquered-Britain.html [Accessed 18 Mar. 2016].

Bughin, J., Chui, M. and Manyika, J., 2013. Ten IT-enabled business trends for the decade ahead. McKinsey Quarterly, 13(May).

Dhore, V.B., Thakar, S., Kulkarni, P. and Thorat, R., 2014. Digital Table Booking and Food Ordering System Using Android Application. International Journal of Emerging Engineering Research and Technology, 2(7), pp.76-81.

Holla, S. and Katti, M.M., 2012. Android based mobile application development and its security. International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology, 3(3), pp.486-490.

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Muccini, H., Francesco, A.D. and Esposito, P., 2012, June. Software testing of mobile applications: Challenges and future research directions. InAutomation of Software Test (AST), 2012 7th International Workshop on (pp. 29-35). IEEE.

Nandos.co.uk. (2016). [online] Available at: https://www.nandos.co.uk/explore/app [Accessed 18 Mar. 2016].

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Play.google.com. (2016).  [online] Available at: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nandos.android.app&hl=en_GB [Accessed 18 Mar. 2016].

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Sarkar, S., Shinde, R., Thakare, P., Dhomne, N. and Bhakare, K., 2014. Integration of Touch Technology in Restaurants using Android. International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing.

Sarwar, M. and Soomro, T.R., 2013. Impact of Smartphone’s on Society.European Journal of Scientific Research, 98(2), pp.216-226.