Here are a few ways franchise management software can bring about improvement in franchise management. Even though the benefits of franchise management software are undeniable designing the software and putting it into action can give rise to lots of challenges even for seasoned franchise owners. 

• Allow easy research to be conducted at both macro and micro levels

When it comes to the macro level, the success of a franchise business heavily relies on in-depth, quality research. The progress made in franchise development is underpinned by demographic data as well as financial reporting. In fact, the majority of franchisors carry out extensive research on potential franchisees prior to having them onboarded. Furthermore, every so often franchisors are found to do research on the following matters namely:

• Consumer reports
• National and international marketing metrics
• Product research and development
• Reputation polling
• Territory research

Since these kinds of research are vitally important, they’re not made to happen through automation or outsourcing. Franchisors, for the most part, acquire hands-on training in connection with market research. They also practice screening of leads during the data parsing stage of the sales cycle. This results in adding enormous value to several time-saving tools and implements since their decision-making rights and expertise always find use somewhere. 

Moreover, research is crucial for individual franchise owners working at the micro-level. Franchisees take great advantage in doing substantial research on the following pursuits.

• Gauging the performance of employees while attending training sessions
• Assessing the performance of employees while they offer service
• Finding out the most suitable local marketing services
• Recognizing the reasons for loss of leads and opportunities
• Identifying the best selling products

By and large, franchisees themselves have the responsibility to seamlessly handle these tasks as they have the requisite expertise and backend access.

To put it simply, franchise management software helps in making this research process streamlined. 

As far as the macro level is concerned, franchise management software is endowed with powerful tools that are capable of doing market research as well as performance monitoring. The software helps in the automatic generation of sales pipeline reports. Once generated, the reports are automatically sent to the emails of franchisors so as to ensure they barely overlook any key metric. 

Franchise management software is in possession of a robust lead management module that facilitates the easy creation of well-researched, insightful lead profiles. It also has a marketing module that brings about simplification in reviewing the results of marketing campaigns. With franchise management software by your side, you can keep track of active franchisees, carry out smooth management of territories, and include a glimpse of the big-picture analysis supported by reports and dashboards replete with data. All these can be done from both stationary and mobile devices.

And, when it comes to the micro-level, franchise management software has compelling backend analytics in its ownership that assign the power to franchise owners to supervise all aspects of their business. The software leads to the automatic generation of performance reports. Besides, key performance indicators can be put on display in real-time on elaborate yet informative dashboards. Franchise management software is outfitted with a field service management module that furnishes among others complete reporting focusing on the following. 

• Client satisfaction rating put in for individual field representatives
• Revenue generated by field representatives

What’s more, franchise management software boasts of lead analysis and referral source tracking tools that help in pinpointing the reasons as to why franchisees are losing out on leads, if at all, they do.

Franchise management software is a cogent research solution that works across multiple levels by introducing automation in data collection and simplified analysis to save time for franchisors and franchisees alike.

• Bridge communication gaps within the organization

Franchise businesses that practice open communication enjoy favorable work environments typified with cooperation, trust, inclusion, and satisfaction. Moreover, in order to gain the trust of employees and make them perform to their fullest potential are aspects that have a definite correlation to the extent by which employees have belief in their managers demonstrating consistent support, transparency, and willingness to listen to their concerns and queries. 

So, how can internal communications be improved? How can transparency and open communication be nurtured and an encouraging work environment maintained?

With accompanying franchise management software putting forward a few concrete solutions, these issues can be addressed.

• The communication in multiple channels across the board needs to be streamlined.

Franchise management software is capable of making all communications systematic by incorporating all contacts and messaging through multiple channels into one application. It allows you to send out text messages, emails, and system-wide notifications and alerts sent from a single messaging tool to a specific number of franchisees, leads, and customers in just a few simple clicks. Thus, franchise management software empowers you to encourage participation and collaboration among the different members of the franchise family. 

• Employee collaboration and autonomy need to be promoted.

This can be done via self-managed schedules that franchise management software comes up with. The software offers an intuitive scheduling tool that allows employees to manage their schedules. As a consequence, the possibility of committing errors is significantly reduced. The system lets employees trade shifts, plan and book their off-days, and ask for changes to be done in real-time by making use of shared calendars. This makes employees more encouraged to establish fruitful communication and keep their responsibility levels intact. All this and more can be supervised by franchisors by allowing them to receive automatic alerts when there’s a change in availability, conflicts in shifts crop up, and more. 

• More emphasis can be put to offer responsive services

Customers always want to be heard. So when complaints against a franchisee arise, you need to come up with responsive understanding support services. Franchise management software is equipped with a support module where clients and customers can have access to simple self-service. The module automates frequently performed tasks, provides a powerful ticketing service, FAQs that can be updated, and digital support libraries to attend to any issues concerning franchisees.

• Enhance sales

Franchise management software can lead to improvement in customer satisfaction rating and streamlined sales process. The field service module of franchise management software enables managers to keep track of the activities done by onsite workers and support them from a remote location. This guarantees smooth and successful job completion. Later, finished job pictures can be uploaded by field reps to set the seal on quality assurance. Moreover, the module establishes instant contact with support services or helps gain access to virtual training documentation as and when problems crop up. 

The field service module of franchise management also comes to your aid in making faster responses to requests raised by customers. The software enables you to quickly find the geo-location of field reps by means of a centralized dashboard. It can let you take job orders as well as check onsite worker availability. In this way, the nearest available worker can be tracked and assigned the job resulting in a considerable reduction in response time.  Faster response time to customer requests coupled with improved service gives rise to greater satisfaction. This, in turn, implies better customer reviews and an increase in the number of referrals at the franchise level as far as your business is concerned.

Franchise management software also contributes to developing franchises. It sends you alerts to speed up the process of contacting new leads. It empowers you in the creation of a dynamically progressing sales process that takes the following components into account.

• Real-time monitoring of leads
• Automation of email marketing campaigns
• Customization of virtual brochures
• Smooth communications

And, prior to committing to any specific important sales decision, the software grants you the ability to check and analyze automatically generated sales pipeline reports that are directed to your email and they help you avoid missing any key metrics, opportunities, or threats.

• Make employee satisfaction levels better

Adequate training or support and transparent communication are two major criteria to boost employee satisfaction. Stress and not-so-conducive work-life balance can lead to considerable employee attrition. If an employee is going through too much stress, it increases anxiety and the incompetence to accomplish a certain task. If employees aren’t given any training or the right resources to do their jobs the ensuing frustration and stress can make them overwhelmed. On the other hand, employees with sufficiently imparted training enjoy high job satisfaction levels. That’s why the aspect of training and support is so important.

Franchise management software offers virtual training courses. It enables you to do the uploading of the entire library set of training resources and reference materials. Franchise management software facilitates the easy onboarding of new employees. Once the employee is hired and put on duty, powerful franchise management lets you monitor their performance in relation to customer satisfaction to detect problems early and resolve them. 

However, at some given instances employees may come across situations where they’re supposed to handle jobs/tasks that weren’t covered in the training they received or mentioned in the operation manuals. To tide over this situation franchise management software provides user manuals with FAQs and self-service options. 

The second criterion to affect employee satisfaction is communication. Franchise management software ensures all communications are streamlined and consolidated in the form of messaging from and to a single app. It allows users to send text messages, emails, and alerts to easily maximize transparency besides encouraging agile internal communications.