In recent times, generic software for business management in the franchise world doesn’t come of much use. In the word of former and current franchise business owners, the primary goal lies in making franchise management software franchise friendly.  

Read on to learn about a few tips to choose the right franchise management software for bringing about maximum efficacy to your business. When it comes to franchisors cloud-based software for franchise management is indispensable. Make sure when franchise management software is cloud-based it connotes the following advantages:

• The disaster recovery process is unshakeable

Regardless of their size franchise businesses need to invest money in powerful disaster recovery functionality. This in particular is important as far as national franchise brands are concerned. Franchise management software facilitates the uploading of franchise materials to a digital library via a private intranet. It makes sure to protect sensitive data at all times.

• The automation of critical updates

Since the data servers are maintained off-premise, a whole lot of security updates and several other software maintenance duties are carried out through automation put forward by franchise management software. In the case of local software, there’s no other option left but to do manual updates of every device.

• Seamless collaboration

By means of a cloud-based franchise management software system, it’s possible to gain access to documents and modify and share them simultaneously among team members from anywhere anytime, and irrespective of the device type. This leads to superior performing automated workflows that are crucial to the success of all franchise systems where maintaining consistency with products, services, and company culture are key.

• Unmatched mobility

The design of franchise management software is conceived in such a way it allows you to do your work from any internet-connected device regardless of the location. This implies franchisees can be monitored, relationships with fresh leads can be built, supply chain and inventory stocks can be supervised, novel marketing campaigns can be designed and many more no matter where you’re logging into the system. Franchise software sets the seal on not confining productivity inside the office only. With cloud-based software for franchise management, you can make any location your workplace and add more value to work-life balance.

Is franchise management software capable of incorporating other existing software into its fold?

For a number of franchisors, streamlined, uniform integration of different items of software is a must. It’s key that the franchise management software you choose is well-matched with others be it leading accounting software such as Quickbooks or any commonplace point of sale program for retail.

Franchise management software is usually designed as an all-inclusive solution. However, at the same time, the significance of consolidation across various platforms cant be denied. So, as far as cross-platform integration is concerned, putting the experience of frontline workers to good use is essential because they’re fully aware of the specific tools franchisees prefer and they design a synergistic backend that helps in lots of time-saving.

Does franchise management software have compatibility with multiple devices?

It’s common knowledge that users of smartphones and tablets avail of a plethora of devices. They can use Android phones, Google phones, Apple products, and several other off-brand communication gadgets within a particular franchise. In keeping with this fact, it’s crucial that franchise management software enjoys compatibility with many different devices and platforms that are commonly used nowadays.

Does franchise management software provide in-depth, accurate reporting?

It’s to be kept in mind that reporting capabilities happen to be one of the important aspects of franchise management software. In the absence of sufficient reporting aimed at offering gainful insights on franchisee performance, sales, revenue earnings, customer churn-outs, and ongoing industry-specific trends and developments, it’s impossible to make critical well-informed business decisions.

Reports generated by franchise management software are automated. Besides they’re intuitive and fully customizable. Once sales pipeline reports are generated automatically, they’re directed to the emails of franchisors in a definite schedule set by them. The reports put more emphasis on key business and performance metrics for every franchise-related element. Even the reports are organized in such a fashion that they can be easily comprehended. And, because of the reason that franchise management software solutions have been deployed across a number of industries the reports so designed and extracted can be customized as per individual franchise needs.

Franchise-friendly features of franchise management software solution.

• It should be able to optimize communications within franchises.

Franchises, not like other regular business models, demand constant, consistent communication among separate outlet owners for the purpose of coordinating changes in brands across the board. Franchise management software makes it effortless for users to establish communication with either the franchise family or any of their contacts step by step or all in one go from sundry types of devices using their preferred mode.

• It should be able to help provide extensive end-user training.

Gaining an understanding of the ways and approaches to using franchise management software isn’t really a difficult task. However, at times, franchisors end up losing significant time, money, and opportunities while imparting lengthy end-user training.

Any software solution that impedes productivity to train employees or needs the hiring of a third-party team of IT professionals is purposeless. That’s why it’s imperative to focus on built-in training and support modules to ensure franchise management software becomes franchise-friendly.

• It should be able to make the onboarding process of franchise owners seamless.

As a matter of fact, franchises enjoy uniqueness in comparison with other businesses owing to the fact that they’re overwhelmed with frequent and enormous demands as far as onboarding franchise owners are concerned. It’s not just about imparting training to a new joiner. In fact, you offer training to new business owners on how to carry out the operations of their franchise units in compliance with highly detailed, standardized processes that are necessary to maintain the consistency of the brand. Therefore, to make sure franchise management software is franchise friendly there are several elements in terms of training and support modules that the onboarding functionality puts forward.

• It should have the ability to continually bring about customization.

Franchises can be categorized into 4 distinct structures namely:

• Single franchise units
• Area representatives
• Area developers
• Sub-franchisors

Obviously, in addition, there are innumerable industries wherein the deployment of these varying structures can be done. With numerous differently performing franchise structures operating across several industries, it’s literally impossible to create a single “one size fits all” type of software system that can also be readily integrated with other generic software solutions intended for bookkeeping, scheduling, and communication.

The sole approach to delve deeper and fashion a system capable of providing several user-specific solutions lies in making everything that can be customized. Franchise management software comes up with impressive and innovative value and its use becomes more worthwhile as you proceed. With an increase in the data you enter related to your franchisees and the unique system they utilize, there’ll be an increase in opportunities you can derive for the creation of new types of content, automation of training and tasks, and generation of highly informative reports.