Opentable: A Case Study

In today’s society, time is of the essence and there is an unspoken urgency that surrounds everything we do. Technology advancements have made us more efficient in our work, and in our personal lives. OpenTable is an example of how technology addresses our need for instant gratification and makes our lives easier. OpenTable provides reservation and customer relationship management solutions to the restaurant industry . Consumers can make free reservations at more than 20,000 restaurants in 12 cities using the OpenTable website1. The website allows consumers to view seating availability, search for various cuisines, and read and write reviews based on their experiences. Additionally, it allows consumers to track reservation history and suggests restaurants consumers might like based on their dining history. There is now also an application available for smart phones
First, Opentable must negotiate with partner restaurants to provide additional information to OpenTable. For example, rather than reserving select tables to be reserved through OpenTable, the partner restaurants must provide OpenTable with updates regarding total capacity, current utility, average turnovers per night, every night. This can be accomplished if partner restaurants enable OpenTable to gain access to their computer servers. This will allow OpenTable to see what the restaurant sees. Second, with this information, OpenTable must develop software algorithms that can take the information entered by the partner restaurants or pulled from their computer and extrapolate how estimated waiting periods. Third, must enable its website and smart phone applications to feed this information back to the customers. This last step should require minimal programming, and the responsibility can be pushed to consumers to refresh the program to get updated