Give your franchise owners the best tools to run their business is paramount to their success which, in turn, translates into yours.
While out-of-the-box software solutions are abundant in this day of modern technology, customized software solutions, tailored to your business model and strategy, will give you optimal results.
Consider this - software needed to run a successful sandwich shop is very different than a solution needed to manage a pest control franchise.
The sandwich shop will rely heavily on the system to manage their inventory and employee scheduling, while the software for the pest control business may need to focus on managing the customer's information, schedule and communication needs.
These two Franchises will require very different and very customized solutions to manage items such as their inventory, customers, employees, ROI.
Imagine how customizing your software can help you more efficiently manage your business. While there are many different ways to customize your software solution, it is important to remember that at its core, there are three very basic requirements that any solid software solution for a Franchise will provide:
- Consistency - it is important that your Franchise Owners are operating as consistently as possible and that you as a franchisor have access to the data and reporting needed to ensure that their performance is meeting your expectations.
- Control - while Franchise Owners are responsible for their own destiny, they could potentially have a negative impact on yours if you don't control their business practices to conform to your business model.
- Communication - what makes a successful Franchise? Successful Franchisees. And how do you encourage growth and success in your Franchisees? Communications are key and one of the best ways to communicate is via the very software the owners use day-to-day.
Simplifying your franchisees work processes helps them be more efficient and allows them to reallocate resources to sales growth and keeping the customers happy.
When we were talking to Iric he made the good point that automation & using CRM software is not done for speed.
It is done to provide objective evidence of where your sales funnel is breaking down.
I thought that was an important observation that could be extended to a lot software - which just speeds up what we would be doing with pen & paper.