CASE STUDY: MILESTONE GROUP
From Spreadsheets to Proactive Control: How Milestone Group Unlocked 8-10% Labour Savings
MEET THE VENUE GROUP
Milestone Group, Darwin, Northern Territory
Owner: Jason Hanna
Jason runs six venues across Darwin including restaurants, cafes and pubs. Each has its own manager. Prior to Viability, the whole operation ran on spreadsheets and disconnected systems.
8-10%
labour cost savings
6
venues
1 month
time to ROI
The Challenge They Faced
Jason was running his venues well operationally. But he had no real visibility into whether his rosters actually made sense from a cost perspective. He’d write a roster based on experience and feel, but he couldn’t see how labour cost stacked up against forecasted revenue—especially broken down by service segment (breakfast, lunch, dinner).
The result was always the same: find out after the week what went wrong. Spreadsheets didn’t talk to each other. Numbers from the POS didn’t match numbers in payroll. Award rules got interpreted wrong and needed manual fixes. Six managers writing rosters in their own way, no way to spot who was overstaffed until it was too late.
Jason knew it was costing him: “You don’t win the battle sitting there staring at spreadsheets. But you really need to see what’s actually happening.”
How Viability Helped
Viability gave Jason a single place to see what was really going on. Not a report that arrived days later—a tool that showed him the actual operating picture the moment a roster was written.
The key insight: write the roster to a forecasted turnover number, then overlay labour cost visibility at the service segment level. Suddenly Jason could see exactly what the roster would cost and how it compared to expected revenue, broken down by breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Viability did this by:
- Pulling revenue directly from POS systems across all six venues, so no re-entry errors or data drift
- Breaking labour cost and revenue down by daypart so the rostering decision actually made sense
- Getting the award rules right the first time, reducing manual rework
- Letting staff self-onboard so Jason wasn’t the one making data entry mistakes
- Responding to Jason’s specific workflow needs — including a time-tracking tool — where they aligned with Viability’s broader product direction.
The results
8-10% labour cost reduction
Jason saved 8-10% on labour immediately and kept those savings. He reckons venues that ignore service segment costing are leaving 10% or more on the table. Once you can cost a roster in real time and adjust staffing before the week starts (not after), wage drift becomes something you control rather than something that happens to you.
Numbers that actually match
Before, one system would show one number and another system would show something different. Once trust is lost, the tool becomes useless. Viability’s single source of truth (POS revenue + costed labour, visible together) fixed that. Jason said it clearly: ‘When you’re looking at your tech that says one number and your other tech says another, you start to lose faith in it.’ That problem went away.
Managers actually use it
Each manager now sees what their roster costs and how it lines up with forecasted revenue by service segment. The conversation changed from ‘Why did we overspend?’ to ‘How do I get this right next week?’ That shift from reactive to proactive is where the real value sits.
What Made the Difference
Jason explored several rostering systems before choosing Viability for its responsiveness and practical approach to real operational needs. Features like mobile time tracking replaced manual entry, and award interpretation was handled with the accuracy required for compliance. That level of alignment made a real difference.
Onboarding was straightforward. Viability’s team set the data up quickly, and staff could self-onboard, so Jason wasn’t the bottleneck for data entry.
The hard part was getting everyone to actually use it regularly. Managers needed to shift from ad hoc spreadsheet checks to daily or weekly system checks. But once that habit formed, the payoff was obvious: better rosters, quicker decisions, margins you could actually control.
From One Owner to Another
“Ask yourself this question right now: Are you writing a roster to a forecasted turnover? If you’re not, you’re leaving a minimum of 5%, even up to 10%, of your labour cost on the table. Viability will immediately show you what that roster actually costs when you overlay it against a forecasted turnover.”
— Jason Hanna, Milestone Group
Viability is now Jason’s central source of truth for operational decisions. His words: ‘It is a valuable tool, and right now, all other products I look at—if they can’t plug into Viability, I look at something else that can.’
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