In a boardroom somewhere, restaurant executives are reviewing new POS integrations – confident they’ve modernized the business.

At the same time, operators in the highest-volume stores are watching those same changes slow service, frustrate staff, and ripple into the guest experience. This gap isn’t just annoying – it quietly erodes margin.

No matter how buttoned-up organizational communication may be, these two worlds can still feel like they operate in silos. And that disconnect can have a huge impact on the direction of a restaurant business.

Case in point: A survey of 1,254 restaurant leaders conducted by Oracle Restaurants and Studio by Informa TechTarget reveals three areas where top restaurant executives are significantly more optimistic about their organization’s point of sale (POS) capabilities than the leaders who naturally have more interactions with store-level employees. This type of gap could keep organizations from addressing holes in processes, data readiness and overall POS functionality.

Three areas the C-suite thinks work – though others are skeptical

The survey highlighted three significant gaps that should be discussed to point out how your organization can think critically about making sure everyone from the CEO to store-level management is on the same page.

1. 63% of C-suite respondents said their systems were fully integrated, but only 32% of director-level respondents agreed.
    
   • Why it matters: When integration looks complete from HQ’s view but feels broken in stores, the result is a series of workarounds: longer ticket times, manual reconciliations and inconsistent reporting that makes it harder to scale.
      
2. 58% of C-suite respondents were extremely satisfied with their systems’ ability to share data, whereas only 45% of VP-level respondents and 39% of director-level respondents felt the same.
    
   • Why it matters: Restaurant leaders closer to the ground regularly hear about the day-to-day technology struggles of individual stores and regions. They’re also likely to be on the hook to solve the resulting data and reconciliation issues before they become significant problems for the whole organization.
3. 56% of C-Suite respondents said their organization had made significant progress in adopting AI and machine learning, but only 35% of director-level respondents agreed with that assessment.
    
   • Why it matters: Promising AI integrations may not be saving time and effort in practice. Getting feedback on what AI integrations have been helpful – and how to address the integrations that either aren’t being used or are seen as underdelivering – is crucial to boosting efficiency.

Despite disconnects, restaurant leaders are ready to evolve

The upside: leaders aren’t stuck. Only 27% of survey respondents cited leadership resistance to change as a main barrier – meaning the appetite to modernize is already there. The opportunity now is directing that momentum toward fixes operators can actually feel.

“Hearing from a lot of CIOs out there, there's a willingness to try new things quicker in the restaurant space than in a lot of other areas,” said Brian Burger, Senior Director, Global Solution Engineering at Oracle.

And this technology expansion mindset extends to guest-facing features, too. For instance, if loyalty program managers are looking for their sign to take a risk, this may be it: 40% of C-Suite respondents said they were excited about experimentation and new types of offers in the loyalty space – more than any other seniority level.

Two steps toward a better future

The good news is there are actionable steps to address these disconnects.

The first step is making sure you have the right POS partner.

It’s important for growing restaurant groups to maintain a perpetual discovery loop with their technology partners to identify gaps and solutions that could grow revenues and cut waste from quarter to quarter. To turn integrations from a project into a performance advantage, Oracle Restaurants established the PIER framework – payments, integrations, extensibility and reporting – to surface gaps that directly impact speed, accuracy and visibility.

“If anybody reads this report and they're looking at where they can improve, the first thing they need to do is some sort of an internal discovery,” Burger said. “We do discovery before we do anything else so that we can identify not just roadblocks or technical hurdles, but optimizations for how restaurants can best improve what they're doing today.”

But technology is only part of the solution. C-Suite leaders should also identify key middle managers who can give regular, unfiltered reports to the organization’s highest stakeholders, painting a clearer picture of on-the-ground challenges than any memo that could be passed up the chain over time. Because when everyone is aligned, the path toward greater revenue becomes easier to clear.

Benchmark your restaurant’s tech strategy

Download the full global restaurant technology and data report – The hidden ROI of restaurant and POS integrations – to see how your team’s data integration, forecasting, and digital transformation compare with over 1,200 restaurant leaders worldwide.