With today’s business world facing cut-throat competition and being confronted with several challenges, it’s known to business owners to be well organized with the intent to stay competitive. Regardless of whether you’re the owner of an established, highly successful franchise, one on the verge of gradually amassing franchisees, or contemplating setting your foot in franchising, you must have access to the latest technological advancements to ensure your business does well. This is where franchise management software can lend you a hand. Replete with a broad-based range of features, franchise management software is aimed at not just helping you to boost your sales but leading you to offer improved customer service as well.
In case you’re thinking about how to achieve such important goals here are a few vital tips for making use of franchise management software effectively.
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Franchise management software should own a well-structured learning management system
When it comes to growing your franchise and outplaying the competition your franchisees and employees must be properly trained. With franchise management software in tow, you should be able to include a specialized module for training with the accompanying powerful feature of the learning management system (LMS). The feature should have the ability in creating customized training courses utilizing videos and several other forms of multimedia and impart them to the team thereby making your business gain significant competitive edge over your rivals.
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Franchise management software should provide advanced marketing choices
If truth be told, steady franchise growth can happen only when people are aware of why the products and/or services you offer are top-notch. That’s why you must put franchise management software into practice which in turn should literally allow for unlimited and unmatched marketing capabilities. With the software by your side, you should be able to visualize innumerable possibilities that can be leveraged with gainful outcomes. For instance, with the built-in, customizable marketing templates furnished by franchise management software, you should be able to produce campaigns that have the prowess to attract customers in droves.
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Franchise management software should be able to provide valuable insights through financial reporting
To grow a franchise and ensure its steady run, the facets of marketing and training are of great consequence. At the same time, it’s vitally important to remain up to date with all your financial details. If you decide to put franchise management software into action make sure it offers seamless royalty processing and QuickBooks and point of sale integration, etc. It should be able to give the options of secure payment gateways together with many different online payment choices to customers to make them feel your business is progressive and ultra-modern being equipped with the most recent technology.
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Franchise management software should offer the scope of continued franchise development
Only with sustained growth in your franchise can you expect your profits to increase in the same proportion. To make this certain, you need to put more emphasis on the aspect of franchise development touching newer heights. In order to make this effective, both franchisor and franchisees need to monitor key performance indicators and business analytics. But it can be more easily talked about than put into practice given that you’re devoid of the power of cutting-edge franchise management software. When implemented, franchise management software should have the ability to send out intuitive alerts and help you reach out to new leads. Furthermore, it should be able to generate reports that give you ample insights on how to improve key performance indicators and make them attain targets. Soon, you’ll find your business at the top of latest trends.
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Make sure franchise management software offers field support to employees
The field service management module and employee management module of the software should be able to easily deliver day-to-day operations and maintain the whole active roster. This will considerably reduce the time taken to do numerous phone calls and travel back and forth between office and field.
It should lead to streamlined communication as all information in connection with the contacts of employees and customers will be readily available. The feature should be capable of sending text messages, emails, alerts, and notifications or originating phone calls from the same system that will be used for storing employee information, monitoring performance, and clearing invoices. The records pertaining to all correspondence should be automatically registered so that employees are able to take stock of detailed instructions, be made responsible for tasks, and receive automatic reminders such as text messages or emails for vital events, tasks, and appointments.
It should grant a franchisor to facilitate optimized scheduling. Franchise management software should help employees to have a consultation with scheduling calendars and fix the time for tasks after locating the geographical location of field representatives. The software should ensure instant notifications are sent to employees and the start and end times of all events are kept track of. The software’s integrated calendar tool should be capable of sending automatic alerts and notifications to users with regard to overtime, potential conflicts, and execution of changes if any. Franchise management software should be holding detailed information on checks and balances and be able to facilitate handing over scheduling responsibilities to employees.
The software should be able to make the stages from scheduling jobs to the generation of invoices to take place smoothly. By and large, the process is set in motion through the assignment of jobs to field representatives through either the franchisee or a centrally managed call center. After confirmation, the employee performs the job and receives an on-the-spot sign-off from the customer after completion of the job is accepted. They should be able to do uploading of pictures to ensure quality assurance prevails or move to invoice generation right away. There should be a facility to collect payments either in person or via an online connection.
The software should be endowed with improved support capabilities that go in concert with streamlined communication. When in case an employee calls for help, franchise management software should have the ability to provide a quicker and more effective means to inquire, backed with relevant correspondence, so that appropriate answers be responded to. Moreover, employees should be able to log in and access franchise-specific privately managed virtual library with its consolidated intranet module and gain access to the following:
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Training materials
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Instruction manuals
This should be able to boost their independence besides freeing up personnel and support resources to be devoted to more vital tasks.
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Ensure franchise management software helps keep track of your overall franchise performance
With multifaceted functionality, software for franchise management should have the competence to monitor performance in real time with precision reporting. This alludes to the fact that you should be able to keep a watch on the following vital minutiae in real time:
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Marketing campaigns
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License fees
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Royalties
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Profit and loss data
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Entire franchise growth
The performance module of franchise management software should come up with reporting analytics and a dashboard. Plus, it should allow you to extract and analyze dynamic reports to keep tabs on whether the key performance indicators are good enough. Irrespective of whether you happen to be a franchisor working hard to develop your brand or a franchisee committed to amplifying in-store sales, a thorough level of monitoring coupled with accurate reporting should be made essential. Furthermore, the information you work on should be easily accessible so that opportunities are never missed out.
In addition, franchise management software should be able to consummate the following.
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Making franchise-specific sales processes highly customized
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Generating and reviewing sales pipeline reports
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Setting up effortless communication with leads, prospects, and their brokers
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Helping leads to penetrate deeper into the sales cycle
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Smoothly managing customer sign-offs
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Creating welcome information aimed at enlightening the leads employing introductory email campaigns
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Gaining access to, analyzing, and updating the contact details of leads
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See to it franchise management software you opt for is capable of increasing your sales
By putting the field service management module of franchise management software to good use, managers should be able to keep a watch on field reps and support them remotely. The main purpose is to guarantee a well-executed job. To warrant quality assurance field reps should be able to upload before and after pictures of the finished job. Also, they should be able to right away get in touch with support personnel or get access to digital training materials assuming that any problem crops up.
Moreover, the field service management module of franchise management software should come to your aid in responding quickly to customer concerns. The software should be able to promptly trace field reps via a centrally operated dashboard, check their availability, and accept job orders. Once the nearest available field rep is geolocated the job can be assigned straight away and the time to respond to requests can be considerably reduced.
Thus, enhanced service standards coupled with speedier response times should result in more customer satisfaction. This in turn leads to better customer reviews and more business referrals for your franchise.
Franchise management software should have the competence to send you well-timed alerts so that contact with new leads can be expedited. It should enable you to add more dynamism to your sales process by including powerful tools such as:
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Automated email marketing campaigns
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Bespoke digital brochures
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Real-time monitoring of leads
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Systematic communications
Also, prior to making any well-informed decision on sales, the software should allow you to do an in-depth analysis of automatically generated sales pipeline reports that are directed to your email. This should ensure you pay deserving attention to key metrics, opportunities, and threats.
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Ensure franchise management software provides ample employee satisfaction
Two important criteria to guarantee sustained employee satisfaction are open communication and sufficient training/support. Stress causes physical and mental collapse of an employee. Stress can be due to overwork or anxiety to complete an assigned task in time. The lack of training can further worsen the situation. In contrast, well-trained employees always feel confident to take on challenges and appreciate job satisfaction. This highlights the importance of training and support.
Franchise management should come up with comprehensive online training courses. It should be able to upload an entire library of study materials. This should ideally make the onboarding of new employees simpler. After being inducted the software should let you monitor the performance of employees. It should facilitate early detection of problems and faster resolution.
At times, however, an employee might still encounter problems even after attending training or looking up reference materials. This can be handled when franchise management software keeps FAQs readily available besides coming up with self-service options. Employees should have prompt, straightforward access to the whole franchise fraternity so that they can seek help for solving their problems by sending in requests via emails or text messages. This relates to open communication giving rise to employee satisfaction.
Franchise management software should be able to streamline every employee communication through the consolidation of all correspondence in a single mobile app. In that case, users should be able to send emails, text messages, alerts, and notifications within the whole franchise network to ensure maximum transparency and encourage more active communication.
