Franchise management software is a powerful tool that comes to the aid of franchisors in teaming up with local franchisees and managing critical business functions like sales, marketing, and customer relationships. 

Here are its 10 basic elements to reckon with. 

• It eliminates compatibility issues and redundancies. 

Software compatibility can be a significant hurdle for franchises, especially when they try to go digital. Franchise management software brings these compatibility errors to an end, thereby eliminating of odds of possible data loss and system instability.  

For instance, you can unify it with your accounting software and marketing analytics tools. In addition, the modular architecture of the software does seamless integration of common data points. As a result, compatibility concerns and manual data entry tasks are put to rest. 

• It comes up with the facility of monitoring vital business metrics in real-time. 

Best-in-class franchise management software allows the franchise owner to keep a watch on the following from a desktop or a mobile device in real-time. 

• Cash flow 
• Expenses 

• Profits 
• Losses 

When you have these key parameter indicators readily available, you can respond promptly to threats and get the most out of potential opportunities before your competition sets in. This is called “visibility” in business. It literally implies you augment the prominence of your most important metrics so that big shots from the industry find them accessible. Thus, visibility is recognized as a prerequisite for well-thought-out decision-making.  

Franchise management put key business metrics on display in real-time in the form of an intuitive dashboard. So regardless of whether, as a franchisee, you’re going through sales details with a fine-tooth comb or franchisor seeking out a fresh market to get in, fully scalable franchise software helps monitor and optimize the planning efficacy and flexibility of the franchise. 

• It provides an all-inclusive enterprise management interface. 

The operations of large-scale franchises aren’t feasible in the absence of any franchise management software. It smoothly incorporates data of all territories, branches, and outlets.  

All-inclusive enterprise software combines all data relevant to franchise development, sales, and marketing to freeze on important decisions. The software also automates several data-sorting jobs to ensure managers get plenty of time to focus on planning and executing long-term strategies. 

• It offers absolute intranet security to underpin brand management efforts. 

The requirement for a secure intranet is crucial. It acts as a centralized reserve for storing documents and resources on brand management. Franchise management software is endowed with this feature to control version updates of brand documents.  

The feature also ensures franchisees work with the most recently updated parameters. It eliminates issues such as manually keeping track of the information status, sending documents to and fro via emails, and always trying to remember the exact parameters you’ve updated and how. 

• It puts forward an interactive helpdesk to offer support to the franchise and ensure collaboration. 

The franchise management software comes up with a collaborative helpdesk to reduce the constant hither and thither that often happens with franchisee support. 

A perfect helpdesk feature will offer the following benefits. 

• Discussion forums with varying permission levels 
• Knowledge bank 

• Search option for trouble tickets 

When these functionalities are shared with your franchisee team, they can make the most of them through individual learning skills. 

• It automatically carries out royalty invoicing. 

The automatic invoicing feature of franchise management software saves time and keeps an eye on pending royalties. It also keeps monitoring when your payments are made. The feature gives an indication of real ROI. 

Any franchise software that doesn’t facilitate the automatic collection of royalties isn’t a practical choice. This is probably one of the major shortcomings that drive any franchise owner to zero in on the ideal software for franchise management. 

• It offers seamless integration with accounting software. 

See to it the franchise software you choose can easily merge with accounting software such as QuickBooks. Integration with accounting software is a highly time-saving approach. The software ensures all financial data are reported automatically to the Chart of Accounts residing inside the accounting software.  

At the same time, it’s always preferable to allocate a different platform such as QuickBooks to preserve all your financial information. This is because accounting software is mainly designed for managing complex financial rules and algorithms that can only be familiar to your accountant. So, make sure mutual integration of franchise management software and accounting software happens smoothly.  

• It provides a call center interface to guarantee streamlined franchise development and customer service. 

Your franchise needs a call center interface. It helps prioritize incoming and outgoing calls and maintains all communication records. Irrespective of whether your franchise sales and marketing team makes outbound calls or responds to calls from customers, franchise management software ensures all this happens smoothly. It links the call center interface with your secure franchise intranet to enable sharing notes related to franchisees and customers with the entire team. It also safeguards updated, confidential contact information and communication history in one place. Therefore, this feature is essential. 

• It arranges for scheduled access via mobile for field service support. 

Franchise management software is mobile responsive to field service teams. They use tools that have perfect mobile format optimization. While on the go, the tools help them in checking their schedules, analyzing the routes, gaining access to customer information, and collecting the payments and their signatures electronically.  

• It provides route optimization to ensure adequate field service. 

With the help of route optimization technology, the franchise management software can automatically create many field service routes that will be productive and profitable to your franchise business. The software permits you to make sure scheduling updates happen in real-time as customer calls and tasks happen all through the day. The feature has seamless integration with mapping to see to it drive time is minimized and arrival times are accurately predicted. As a result, you can avoid the risk of keeping your schedule unmonitored. 

Visit BrandWide to know more about our franchise management software or book a free consultation with an expert.