Cypad offers a comprehensive range of tools for school catering. All the information collected for a contract, be it information collected in the kitchen, from meal selection, payments or information collected out monitoring, is held in a single database. This information is available throughout the application. So, for example staff hours entered in Kitchen Manager are available to be included as a KPI in the Reporting Module.
There are times when data needs to be imported into the database from other systems such as SIMS, spreadsheets or food suppliers’ systems or exported from it to other systems such as Oracle, SAP, Navision or proprietary systems.
Integrations
We have over 45 integrations with food suppliers and with other systems such as online payments (ParentPay and Schoolcomms) and SIMS. These can be managed without advanced IT skills.
When to Integrate with External Systems
Many of the cost and efficiency gains made possible with Kitchen Manager are available using standard Kitchen Manager capabilities, making use of existing integrations with suppliers and simple Excel/CSV exports. Reports for cooks, area managers, senior managers and schools are available from within the system. Ensure these are set up and being used, and your rollout is well under way or preferably completed, before tackling more complex integrations with other internal systems.
Importing
We use Excel/CSV as the basis for all imports. These can be used on a one-off basis to populate the system as the database is set up and on an on-going basis to import new data, such as new staff members or to update existing data, for example updating supplier food pricing.
Imports are generally accessed from the Admin menu of each module, where you are shown the field layout. Contact Cypad Support if you are considering a complex import.
Exporting
Exporting to Excel/CSV
Cypad collects a wealth of information about the service a caterer is providing. Most of this is available from the Cypad web-based Desktop, so is accessible to Area Managers and other users who don’t have advanced IT skills.
Exporting using the Data Reader
The Data Collection Module offers a Data Reader for looking at data aggregated to the daily level. That is one record per day per site for each Data Collection field category. These start with a ‘D’ and include: D1100 Trading Days, D2150 Meals Total Child, D5100 Hours Meals. The data can be exported manually or emailed to an agreed address on a daily or weekly basis.
Exporting using the Cypad Data Extractor
The Cypad Data Extractor (CDE) is an Application Programming Interface (API) that provides customers a method to extract selected data stored in Cypad databases through their own custom built software. If you have multiple databases the data will be brought together, so that data for your whole business can be accessed from one location.
A wide variety of data can be accessed using the appropriate parameters.
Bespoke exports to external systems
We can provide bespoke exports to external systems using CSV or XML and either providing a web service; emailing them or putting them to a FTP site. These may be chargeable.