2 Tips to Improve Franchise Management Services

Today’s post spotlights two ways FranchiseSoft can improve your franchise management services. Let’s jump right in:

1. Make Research Easy At the Macro and Micro Level

At the macro level, successful franchising depends heavily on quality research. Demographic data and financial reporting underpins every move in franchise development, and most franchisors do plenty of research on prospective franchisees before welcoming them into the family. And don’t forget about consumer reports, product R&D, territory research, reputation polling, national marketing metrics… franchisors do a lot of research.

And because it’s so vital, this research generally isn’t automated or outsourced–that’d be a little like outsourcing a big sales meeting. Most franchisors get hands-on with market research and lead screening (at least at the data parsing stage), which makes any time-saving tools extremely valuable, since their expertise and decision-making authority is always needed somewhere.

Research is also important for individual franchisees at the “micro” level. Franchisees benefit greatly from knowing how employees are performing in their training or service; knowing which local marketing services work best; identifying reasons for losing leads; and knowing which products are selling best. And again, the franchisees themselves are usually responsible, since nobody else has the expertise or backend access to handle this task.

Simply put, FranchiseSoft makes research easy.

At the macro level, we put powerful market research and performance monitoring tools in your hands. FranchiseSoft auto-generates pipeline reports and sends them to your email automatically to make sure you never miss a key metric. Our lead management module makes it easy to create well-researched lead profiles, and our marketing modules simplifies ad campaign reviews. With FranchiseSoft, you can track active franchisees, manage territories, and take in big-picture analyses at a glance with our data-packed dashboards, all from your mobile device.

At the micro level, our powerful backend analytics give franchisees the power to oversee every aspect of their business. Key metrics and performance indices of your choice can be laid out in real-time on your dashboard, and performance reports are automatically generated. Our field service management module provides complete reporting on client satisfaction by field rep, revenue by field rep, and much more. Plus our referral source trackers and lead analysis tools help you pinpoint the reasons why your business is losing leads.

Bottom-line: FranchiseSoft is a multi-level research solution that automates the data collection and simplifies analysis to save franchisees and franchisors time. That can only improve your franchise management services.

2. Bridge your Organization’s Communication Gaps

It’s true, though–science says so. In 2014, an exploratory study by the International Journal of Business Communication underscored the role that internal communications play in a company’s success. In fact, the study was a meta-analysis that reviewed results from more than 40 other studies on the topic. In the overwhelming majority of these studies, companies practicing open communication had “positive work environments,” characterized by trust, cooperation, inclusion, and satisfaction (Mishra et al., 2014, p. 183). Further, employee trust and performance levels were positively correlated to the degree to which they believed their managers demonstrated “transparency, support, and a willingness to listen” (p. 184).

So how do you improve your company’s internal communications? How do you cultivate open communication and a positive work environment?

It’s a big, abstract question, but FranchiseSoft has some concrete solutions:

• Streamline your communication across multiple channels. FranchiseSoft streamlines all communications by distilling all of your contacts and multi-channel messaging into a single app. Send SMS, email, or system-wide alerts from the same messaging tool to any number of leads, customers, or franchisees with a few clicks. This empowers your franchise management services, and also encourages collaboration within the franchise family.
• Promote employee autonomy and collaboration via self-managed schedules. Our intuitive scheduling tool gives you the option of letting employees manage their own schedules, without leaving any room for human error. They can trade shifts, book time off, and request changes in real-time using the shared calendar, which encourages them to communicate while upping their responsibility level. But don’t worry: you can still overseer it all, with alerts sent automatically when availability changes, shift conflicts arise, and more.
• Emphasize responsive support services. People want to know their voice is being heard. So when a franchisee has a gripe, your support services need to be responsive. Our franchise support module uses simple self-service, automation of frequent tasks, powerful ticketing, updatable FAQs, virtual support libraries, and intuitive step-by-step walkthroughs to address any issues the franchisee might have.

Enhance your Franchise Management Services

Book a free consultation or simply explore our franchise solution on your own at https://www.franchisesoft.com.

References

Mishra, K., Boynton, L., & Mishra, A. (2014). Driving employee engagement: The expanded role of internal communications. International Journal of Business Communication, 51(2), 183-202.