Statistics reveal nearly 90 percent of franchise businesses become successful using franchise development. As far as different types of businesses are concerned this is one great achievement that has made franchisors confident and franchisees convinced to roll their money in.

However, if you’re a franchise marketer you may be forced to contend with many unique challenges associated with franchise development and dissemination of your marketing resources.

It goes without saying, franchisees are never exactly alike. Each of them has exclusive requirements for its local market and different participation levels. That’s why the inclusion of best-in-class franchise management software becomes indispensable.

Here are things you need to examine before settling on the franchise management software just perfect for your needs.

1. The software should have the ability to retain franchise brand compliance and consistency.

Compliance and consistency are considered main ingredients as far as franchise marketing is concerned. At the same time, they send off a compelling marketing message. The franchise management software you opt for must be able to guarantee this by setting up all requisite marketing ingredients at a single in-house location wherefrom franchisees can get training materials, directives, and support to attain success in their business.

Keeping your franchise brand compliant and consistent comes with its share of advantages. Research shows that brand consistency helps augment your revenue earning by roughly 25 percent. Almost every business has its brand compliance guidelines. But just one-fourth of them have so far formally enforced the guidelines.

When you put franchise management software into action make certain you’re in charge of handling marketing materials for your brand. Also, see to it your franchisees maintain uniform brand identity all through. That’s the means of achieving success.

2. The software must have the ability to cut down production time

Franchise management software should be able to automatically search for images, emails, attachments, correspondence, etc. so that you don’t have to manually do this chore and waste your time. The software should facilitate the completion of the search process in just a few clicks.

The software must be able to store and secure your digital assets at a single, convenient, and easily traceable location. Make sure the software fits your needs to the T and can be engineered accordingly.

Ensure the software helps expedite the production process. In general, franchises spend lots of time responding to the marketing needs and materials requests from franchisees. As a consequence, their main workflow gets slowed down. The software should be able to fulfill individual marketing needs by offering a web-based, easy-to-use reserve of marketing materials for your franchisees to access. The streamlined process helps empower local marketers and bolster franchise development.

3. The software should be capable of carrying out multichannel marketing

As far as marketing materials are concerned franchise marketers demand full agreement from their franchisees. Throughout channels retaining consistency is important. For instance, the following need to work in total synchronization.

• Direct mail campaigns

• Point-of-sale displays in the e-commerce store

• Email marketing campaigns

• Social media campaigns

Make sure the franchise software you choose makes an encouraging impact on your customers at all touchpoints. So, see to it the software is scalable and adaptable to multiple channels to fulfill your constantly varying marketing goals.

4. The software should be able to reduce marketing waste

In fact, franchise marketers devote plenty of time to prepare marketing resources. Are you aware they may go in vain if the dimensions of the local space of a franchisee aren’t taken into account while preparing the resources? Every location will have its unique needs. So it’s imperative the software allows you to share marketing materials with local franchisees and let them select as per individual requirements.

Also, when you implement top-notch franchise management software, it should facilitate local marketers to choose their relevant location-specific marketing materials. This favorably defeats the idea of sending the same materials to all and sundry without being cognizant of specific needs.

Wastage happens when dispatched marketing materials aren’t used and put to practice. Plus, you end up spending money to distribute products that weren’t essential. The software has to make sure the franchisees look after the ordering process all by themselves by employing a digitally enhanced print-on-demand feature.

It’s the franchisees who know what’s suitable for their location. The software should enable them to trace and choose from a selection of brand-authorized marketing materials. In this manner, wastage can be significantly reduced.

5. The software should be available with integrated APIs

Best franchise management software is one that incorporates several Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to ensure seamless data communication throughout various software frameworks. APIs are meant for putting in clean data and extracting unambiguous measurable results.

The software must have the ability to clear out all duplicate contacts from the database. Surely you wouldn’t want an imprecise marketing strategy. Also, make sure, there are no incorrect data entries, bad formatting, or broken codes.

The reports generated by your chosen franchise management software must complement your business best practices. You can team up with a Managed Service Provider (MSP) to see to it your data is well-ordered and you accomplish your marketing goals. MSPs have the technology, experience, and know-how to aid you in automation, sending direct mails, and making personalized reports – everything with a robust customer service system.

6. The software has to be scalable

As you become more and more successful in your franchise business, you’ll start getting more and more data in your information reserve. This sounds ok until you find out the brand management software you use is neither capable of housing vast reserves of data nor handling new workload pressures.

So, you need to have recourse to franchise management software that can adapt and grow simultaneously with your business growth. Make sure it’s capable of easily adding new users and locations to your franchise marketing system without bringing in extra headaches. What’s more, check if the software can assign different levels to different users as any two users may not have the same authority to access the database.

Software automation must also provide assistance to your efforts in upscaling the business. Examine if the software can fabricate marketing campaigns by triggering events. With a gradual buildup of customers, the software must be in a position to automatically send your campaigns via email, text messages, and direct mail and float them on social media channels as well.

7. The software must have reporting capabilities

Ensure the franchise management software you’re opting for has all-inclusive reporting capabilities. The software has to be guaranteed with creating, customizing, and analyzing competence. It should allow you to generate reports on key business-centric marketing insights and share them with your team.

• The software must be able to easily extract the following information with accuracy.

• Performance of direct mail campaigns

• User engagement numbers

• E-commerce sales figures

• The number of digital asset searches

The reports you get should be highly informative so that you can realize your success drivers and areas of improvement to ensure franchise development. You can apply the recommendations each report comes up with, in your next marketing campaign.

Some of the reports you may want the software to produce include the following.

• A report that can keep a track of your sales based on categories such as:

  • Product name

  • Number of sold units

  • Total dollar amount sold

• The software should send you an alert when there are abandoned products appearing on the shopping cart of your e-commerce website. In addition, a message can be promptly directed to the customer with an offer of a discount, or other incentives to consummate the purchase.

• The software should notify low inventory levels at the right time.

• Receive notifications when your inventory goes below a predefined threshold.

Find out if you can create special reports for loyal customers depending on their unique needs.

So, ultimately why do you need franchise management software? It’s all about improving your bottom line – ROI. No franchise business can guarantee a certain ROI. However, the software implementation will place you perfectly to create effective marketing strategies. Pick top-of-the-range franchise management software from BrandWide. We offer solutions custom-designed to meet your franchise’s distinctive needs. Book a free consultation and live demo today.