CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER’S PERSPECTIVE
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER’S
C A M P U S D I N I N G T O DAY
8 GRETCHEN COURAUD
chief executive officer gcouraud@NACUFS.org
perspective
As our board of trustees focus their time and attention on vision, strategy, and the future of collegiate dining in higher education, they are delegating operational management to staff. In light of this issue’s theme, finance and capital improvement, I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you an operational update and tell you how business systems and staff support will benefit you as we continue building a strong foundation.
A primary focus of our work this past year, was work on the back-of-the-house and business systems. Systems aren’t glamorous, but effective organizations can’t survive without them. By comparison, your back of the house business systems support you with tools and information such as recipe management, inventory, purchasing, nutrition analysis, event planning, profitability, and cost analysis. These help you execute seamlessly and provide your students with a positive point of sale experience, a speedy C-store exchange, and nutrition and allergy labeling to give students the information they need to make solid nutrition choices. These are all examples of how systems ultimately provide your customer with a stellar experience. Similarly, NACUFS has a number of business systems that help our staff operate, execute, and provide value. By providing greater back-of-the-house support, this year we made our volunteers’ lives easier. For example, by bringing in-house all the regional conference financials including conference registrations, showcase, and sponsorship, we freed up valuable time for our volunteers to focus on building a powerful member experience at our conferences. By streamlining the registration process, our industry members now have one point of contact for payment, making their lives easier and saving them time.
We provided valuable staff support to our volunteers by creating the position of regional manager and promoting Karen Ciaramella to assist you in your work. As a second example, the myNACUFS campaign supported the efforts of the membership committee with strong staff support. This effective campaign relied on data analytics to track individual behaviors and patterns. This proved to be effective as we recruited 36 new members this year.
Imagine the possibilities when we can shift our focus from managing NACUFS to empowering volunteers to define excellence and help you succeed every day on your job. In the future, we will build information to not only plan better events, but ultimately to understand your needs, habits, and patterns as operators. With analytics and business intelligence, we will be able to plan proactively for the future, just like on your campuses. When we can understand your needs and preferences we can better connect you with your peers and develop products you desire. We will also be able to customize the learning experience to your needs. Toward that end, in 2017 we completed a systems audit. It identified strengths and weaknesses in our systems and laid the groundwork for us to upgrade our systems in 2018. Information is only as powerful as the people who interpret and use it to make decisions and influence change. So, let me share with you one story of what is possible. In April, our Horton dining judges met with a representative from our sustainability and nutrition awards teams. We started with a discussion about how to integrate metrics to articulate your value on campus and tell your story through our awards program to the world. There was vigorous dialogue, excitement and enthusiasm in the room about where technology can take us in the future. We are excited to continue tapping the enthusiasm for this and many other strategic initiatives. NACUFS is the voice, the source, and the place for campus dining professionals. As we enter our 60th year, we’re looking forward—creating a strong vision for the association—where member value is on the forefront of every decision. We are proud to serve our members and work towards offering the highest level of customer service possible.