OpenTable’s Grant Parsamyan on How Data and Analytics is Helping the Restaurant Industry Rebound from COVID-19

The restaurant industry has been one of the hardest hit industries over the last year. Amid countless closures and reopenings, restaurants have overcome many obstacles in an effort to survive. Through these struggles, restaurant professionals have turned to data to optimize everything from takeout orders to new layouts, all the way to analyzing market recovery. 

Grant Parsamyan is the Senior Vice President for Data and Analytics at OpenTable, an online restaurant reservation service that is empowering restaurants of all sizes to operate more efficiently through the use of technology. 

On this episode of The Data Chief, Grant dives into OpenTable’s State of the Industry site, designed to illustrate how COVID-19 has impacted restaurants through powerful data storytelling. Grant and Cindi also discuss the importance of data literacy, and picking the right analytics tools to match business use cases. Enjoy!

Main Takeaways

• Measuring success and proving value: Measuring success or measuring value from data and analytics is a difficult proposition. A recent study suggests less than 14% of businesses go back to do an ROI study, so it’s incumbent on data professionals to continuously be capturing anecdotes of the businesses benefits to prove value over time. A best practice for measuring value is to set a baseline and make sure that you pick the right tool to advance your use case and then measure that baseline to provide the value of those investments to gain the credibility to advance your analytics.
• Decline of the dashboard: The role of data professionals is becoming less about developing dashboards and more about creating tools that empower users to answer their own questions. Because data flows at such a quick pace, predetermined views and dashboards are often outdated as soon as they’re created.
• Data sharing leads to quicker results: Data sharing is enabling customers to monetize data without the messiness of manual file transfers. By being able to share data from one platform to another, data professionals are not constrained by time and volume.

About Grant

Grant Parsamyan serves as the Vice President - Data Engineering and Analytics of OpenTable. Grant started at OpenTable in March of 2017. Grant currently resides in the Greater Los Angeles area.

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The Data Chief is presented by our friends at ThoughtSpot. Searching through your company’s data for insights doesn’t have to be complicated. With ThoughtSpot, anyone in your organization can easily answer their own data questions, find the facts, and make better, faster decisions. Learn more at thoughtspot.com. 

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For full show notes and more, go to thedatachief.com.

Hear more from Cindi Howson here. Sponsored by ThoughtSpot.