5 Essential Features of Every Franchise Software Solution:

If you still aren’t making the most of the incredible features of franchise software solution, read on to become familiar with five of its most important ones.

Table of content:

• Automated workflows
• Source tracking
• Integration
• Centralized communication
• Powerful reporting and analytics

1. Automated workflows:

One of the most important functionalities of franchise software solutions is workflow automation, and genuinely so. By automating repetitive tasks such as welcome emails, data entry, and providing support ticket updates, you can release staff faculties to concentrate on more important tasks such as brand development and sales closure. 

It helps better utilize your employees’ time and boost their morale and engagement. Job satisfaction is heightened when employees devote more time to high-value tasks. Is it more worthwhile to interact with people or solve problems instead of entering the contact details of the leads throughout the day?

Franchise software allows you to design and implement automated customized workflows that comply with the unique needs of your business. It helps map processes and set triggers for automatically welcoming new leads, updating their contact details, generating reports, handling other mundane, low-value tasks, and converting them into smooth-running operations. Franchise software is brought into being to be compliant with all business models, which indicates serious control over end users.

2. Source tracking:

It’s imperative to track the source of your leads. It is why source tracking directly determines the decisions you make about marketing campaigns. In case you’re not aware of wherefrom your leads are arriving; you’re simply running somewhere aimlessly, suddenly, and rapidly and shelling out marketing dollars with no solid outcomes.

The significance of source tracking lies in that franchisors, for the most part, are adept at running campaigns simultaneously across many platforms to generate leads. Without the source tracking capability, launching marketing campaigns and gauging their performance concerning identifying leads become impractical.

Every time a piece of new lead information is manually or automatically entered into the system, franchise software instantly tags its source. It allows you to look for leads from the directory and sort them based on their source to effectively assess the results of a marketing campaign at a glance. 

3. Integration:

Franchise software is built to be compatible with any business model. It indicates you’re fully in control of end users and customization possibilities. However, software integration is equally important.

Every franchisor utilizes various software tools alongside each other. Franchise software is designed to perfectly go along with other coexisting software systems that add to the efficiency of the entire set-up by having all data organized and stored in a single, centralized location. Franchise software is developed to smoothly incorporate leading software solutions such as QuickBooks, Intuit, Authorize.net, DocuSign, etc., and to form synergistic pairings. 

4. Centralized communications:

Nowadays, there are many ways to contact someone in this digital world. For instance, if there’s a change in the appointment time for a particular client, the information can be passed on to the employee via the following channels.

• phone call
• text message
• email
• ping through WhatsApp
• Skype face to face
• Facetime call
• Messenger pigeon

Thus, it’s evident that the options to communicate are endless. But, still, there can be glitches. The odds of texts not going through or emails landing in the spam folder aren’t uncommon. With an increase in the number of communication channels, the likelihood of messages being missed also increases. While some people check their emails frequently, others do it every week. 

Since people prefer various communication channels, trying to reach out to leads via the wrong channel can result considerably in missed opportunities. In the example, such a missed opportunity for the employee would lead to a trip gone wasted who could’ve switched to a different appointment and rather made good use of that time for completing a job.

So, how can an employee be contacted? Do you intend to send only one message on one channel and expect the message to be read and acted upon in time? Or would you prefer to send the same message through different communication channels and hope it’s checked in time?

In an ideal scenario, it’s neither of the options that franchise software adopts. Only it stores all communications in a centralized location so that any employee can be contacted through any communication channel supported by the software platform. 

Not only does this improve the communication standard, but it also helps increase staff accountability because all communications are channelized via franchise software, and the chances of missing any memo are significantly reduced. 

5. Powerful reporting and analytics:

All great franchise software systems have exemplary reporting capabilities and analytical capacities. To keep up the competitive advantage of your franchise business in 2022, you need to continuously obtain valuable insights concerning automated workflows, marketing campaigns, lead referral sources, sales funnels, communication channels, and franchisee performance. Also, it’ll not be easy on your part to optimally develop your brand unless you monitor the progress made in attracting the target audience, meeting financial goals, and converting qualified leads. 

The implementation of franchise software makes sure each of these aspects is addressed. Franchise management software can scrutinize information about different franchisees by collating and cross-referencing the available data.

The software helps automatically generate reports that emphasize key performance indicators, opportunities, and threats appropriate to the business. These reports are automatically sent to your emails as per the set schedule. Furthermore, franchise software comes up with a display of a comprehensive dashboard that enables you to track the results of marketing campaigns, statuses of leads in real time, and franchisee performance.