‘Unless we do something with the data, it is meaningless’: Compass One’s Ben Dawson on turning numbers into action

Within your Medirest estate, what objectives are clients particularly focused on and how is data supporting this?

For Medirest, its organisational objectives are around patient satisfaction and our function is to support our clients to meet those objectives. People by far make up the biggest contributor to our operation within Medirest, so when those people aren’t there, because of problems with shift patterns, for example, we can react to it in the best way possible. We’ve created – and are trailing right now – a tool that forecasts when we’re likely to have absence at a shift level so that the operator can then do something about it, such as pre-emptively covering it with additional shifts so that we can maintain that level of patient satisfaction.

And likewise, what is your ESS estate particularly focused on?

Offering menus with the correct level of nutrition is paramount within ESS, and balancing the amount of protein we need on a menu becomes a little bit more challenging when we overlay that with our sustainability mission. Combining both the sustainability data with the nutritional data and crafting a menu with our culinary teams is probably the area where we support our ESS clients the most.

Can you share with us an example of where data has been turned into positive action?

Within E15, we’re fortunate to have workforce management specialists who conduct very detailed time and motion studies on a particular location, which has particularly benefited our Medirest estate. Through that, we’ve been able to make sure we get the right people in the right place at the right time to enhance patient experience. We also look at the bigger picture, such as using data to scrutinise and improve our menus to achieve our sustainability goals.

Managing various internal teams as well as clients to meet their various objectives must be challenging – how do you manage this?

E15 has a very strong team that consists of technical experts and subject matter experts, but understanding the business context is important too. My job, and what I love doing day-to-day, is connecting those dots between the team and across the business itself to understand what our business and our clients are aiming for and how that compares with what we’re bringing to the party.

“We have almost two lanes that we operate in: in some areas, done is better than perfect; in others, perfect is required”

At the Tech Confex, what three things do you want the audience to take away from Compass One’s session?

End-to-end is key. I can’t stress that enough. We’ve got the capabilities to bring the data into our systems, we can do the analysis, but, unless we do something with it and do something differently as an organisation and with our clients, it is effectively meaningless.

The second message will be around the directional evidence of what we do. Taking sustainability as an example, we have to be audited on our sustainability statements, so everything has to be perfect. However, when we are making operational decisions about our menu, we have enough data to make better decisions without it being perfect, which allows us to increase the reporting frequency and make decisions faster. Then, we can see those outcomes in the results when they come through the auditory process. We have almost two lanes that we operate in: in some areas, done is better than perfect; in others, perfect is required.

Lastly, I want to emphasise simplification of the business processes and knowing which systems we want to integrate with, because you can’t integrate with everything at the same time, and that’s where prioritisation comes in.

Hear more from Ben Dawson

Dawson will be speaking at The Caterer’s upcoming Tech Confex on Wednesday 25 June about how hospitality businesses can turn data into action