Waterloo Restaurant Ventures owns the Romano’s Macaroni Grills in Northern California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Corporate HR requests a system that allows them to keep track of all worker paperwork without the need for manual re-entry or paper-copy traffic. In addition, corporate accounting needs to minimize or eliminate manual re-entry into different systems that Waterloo uses to keep track of their business.

For the first problem, we delivered a web-based system that keeps track all data, making sure that common pieces of information like names are actually reused, and allows for on-demand production of a pdf copy (including a captured electronic signature). The LAMP-based system allows the client to expand the system by defining new documents and their associated pieces of data. In architecting the system, I evaluated and selected off-the-shelf components for certain tasks like signature capture.

For the second problem, a separate LAMP-based system is created to be a generic and expandable data-batch transfer application. This facilitates data transfer between systems such as the restaurant management system, the corporate accounting system, the utilities broker and even the bank’s check-reconciliation system; allowing automated flow of data with the option of manual overrides where irregularities are detected. I worked with the third-party vendors to establish and implement the data exchange protocols required.