ISS Mediclean Uses Saffron Spice To Increase Control At Operating Sites

There is no escaping the fact that hospital catering is coming under greater scrutiny, raising the bar for caterers who not only have to remain ultra-efficient in a competitive environment by keeping control on costs, but also reassure clients that the meals served meet their dietary requirements.

To help meet these twin demands, software specialist Fretwell-Downing Hospitality has developed Saffron, a system designed specifically for foodservice operators to keep tight control on their catering management information, and which also has the capability to nutritionally analyse the meals served.

It was this drive to simplify and increase the efficiency of recording essential management information from its operating sites that attracted ISS Mediclean, one of the UK’s leading hospital support service suppliers, to Saffron.

The company, which provides services at nearly 200 outlets within their contracted UK hospitals ranging in size from 40-1,200 beds, has installed Saffron as a total management system, including the nutritional analysis of meals served.

At head office, the system holds the production plans, costings and up-to-date supplier prices, together with purchasing and stock data and a comprehensive recipe database. Through the installation of the web-enabled version of Saffron, ISS Mediclean’s operating sites also have access to the central system via a password-protected internet site.

At the operating sites, when catering staff raise purchase orders according to production plans, the system triggers the update of the centrally-held information such as stock levels right through to providing feedback on gross profit margin of a staff restaurant, or cost per patient.

Through Saffron, the process for recording management information has been standardised, eliminating duplication of work between the operating units and the head office, as well as reducing the amount of time that each catering manager has to spend on recording the data.

The system has also integrated well with ISS Mediclean’s other IT systems – the ICD invoice tracking and control system; and the menu capture data programme, MCD.

With a key objective of maintaining an extremely high quality service at each of its operating sites, the company also decided that Saffron would be a more effective tool than the business’ own nutritional package, which had become outmoded with expansion and the evolving requirements within hospital catering.

The centrally-held recipe database guarantees uniformity, and ISS Mediclean is now obtaining more accurate and instant information using analysis that is based on the industry-recognised McCance & Widdowson database.

As Andy Jones, ISS Mediclean’s director of catering explains: “For us, Saffron has been an effective choice as it allows more of our staff to access the system. Plus it means there doesn’t need to be any on-site maintenance of the system, and with more control centrally, standards such as uniformity of recipes have been easier to maintain. Our managers can now get on with the business of managing without having to worry about the actual processes involved.

He adds: “Ever-changing demands in catering means that the nutritional analysis capability of Saffron has really come into its own, as it allows us to be pro-active and able to take the lead with our clients because products or changes can be identified and implemented quickly.”

ISS Mediclean is now planning to roll-out Saffron so that all its sites will have access to the standard recipes, the nutritional analysis to work with a client’s specific dietary requests, and stock control and production planning capabilities. Larger sites will benefit from Saffron’s full management service.

FDH’s business development manager Andrew Markwell points out: “By working in partnership with ISS Mediclean we have been able to tailor Saffron to the company’s own requirements.

“Particularly in the wake of calls for the meal provision in hospitals to be vastly improved, the nutritional analysis capability of Saffron has helped give ISS Mediclean an edge in a marketplace that is seeking reassurances about the quality of food that patients receive.”
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