HCL to help Develop e-Restaurant

A leading U.S.-based hospitality group has chosen an Indian information technology (IT) company to help it develop a restaurant portal, or e-restaurant. HCL Infosystems Ltd. (HCL Insys) has been chosen by the American group to develop and equip the e-restaurant with e-commerce applications for customers to conduct online transactions with its member restaurants in North America. Without disclosing the name of the American group, because of an agreement with it, Sharad Talwar, general manager-marketing, HCL Infosystems, said the company bagged the "prestigious project after conceptualizing the whole idea so as to make a difference for the client to positively affect their sales and turnover." "HCL Insys has done similar e-commerce projects for clients both in India and abroad, including an e-commerce solution for the Maharashtra government's food and drug administration department. We have also done infrastructure development for some ISPs (Internet service providers). HCL was chosen because of its inherent strengths and its ability to provide totally integrated services," Talwar told India Abroad News Service. The e-commerce solution for the American client will enable the e-restaurant offer services such as providing information on the location of restaurants, including driving directions, accepting online orders for food, table bookings and even taking order cancellations. The portal will provide services such as restaurant recommendations, community services and advertising and promotional opportunities. The application to be developed by HCL Insys will also have built-in search functions to answer questions regarding the location of restaurants nearest to the customers, according to the distance that the user is willing to travel, and regarding the choice of cuisine in those restaurants. A "personalisation module" in the e-restaurant would help member restaurants as well as users create and access home pages, retrieve previous orders and cuisine preferences. "Customers do not seek the same kind of information from a portal, so we will provide a personalized service for each of them," Talwar said. HCL Insys will review and develop alternative selling strategies to cover all aspects of catering, hospitality and delivery chains for the American hospitality group, he said. "The dotcom revolution is opening up so many new and unique customer interfaces. With marketing costs spiraling and an ever-increasing clutter, the Internet lends itself as a very efficient and novel way to build and sustain customer relationships. We are happy that our e-infrastructure portfolio clearly differentiates us in the highly-developed and competitive U.S. e-commerce market," Talwar said. "The whole objective of the Web is to cut costs for the company, help it become more productive and increase its sales and that is what we expect our solutions to do for the American client," Talwar added.