Whether you’re an established franchisor or a business owner looking to grow your business through the franchise model, it’s important that you utilise market-leading digital solutions to drive productivity, maximise efficiency and improve the performance of your scaling business.
It doesn’t have to be complex. With the right combination of integrated systems, you can streamline the operational processes within your business to avoid double-handling data, multiple subscription fees, and unnecessary operational costs. You’ll also get access to incredible business insights that help you step up your game when it comes to fast and effective decision making.
In this article, our franchising experts take a deep-dive into the digital systems available to franchise business owners, and how they can utilise connection, consolidation and centralisation to boost performance. Let’s learn more about the 3 C’s of franchising!
Connection: Letting Your Franchise Software Do the Work
Connection refers to the automation of everyday processes within your franchise system through integrated software. An Application Programming Interface (API) is just one way that you can connect your software, allowing two (or more) of your solutions/applications to talk directly to one another and share data.
Connecting data can help you save time at your Point of Sale, and prevent you from having to double-handle data. For example, if a customer is sitting within your restaurant and chooses an item off of your menu, your kitchen is the part of the system that will make the order. The connection missing here is the link to communicate the customer’s order to the kitchen and deliver the prepared food back to the customer. That’s where the API, or in this case – the waiter, comes in. The API acts as the messenger between the customer and the kitchen, and is responsible for taking your customer’s request, and telling the kitchen what to do. From there, the waiter will deliver the prepared food back to your customer. Through leveraging the use of APIs as a tool or means of connecting systems together and having segmented databases and systems talking to each other in real time, you’re able to seamlessly drive integration between your people, systems and business operations.
Connection gives you the ability to yield more potential within your franchise, and save money and time that would otherwise be put towards investing in extra headcount to drive low-value operations and activities. Connection can also help boost the efficiency of your business – even from the till! When selling a product at your Point of Sale, connection can enable you to deplete the product from your inventory system, create a sales invoice, and even restock your supply. In simple terms, connection is the ability to seamlessly send information back and forth between your applications without having to double enter your data or lift a finger.
Consolidation: Combining Your Franchise Software with HubSpot
Often, when we step into franchise systems, we find that so many businesses are employing numerous applications, systems, and people to drive a single operation. With technology constantly evolving and developing, we no longer need to burden ourselves with the chore of doing the same activity in several different applications (MailChimp, Hootsuite, a CRM database, etc). Processes can now be streamlined and simplified by effectively consolidating all of these applications and systems into one.
The implementation of a complete solution, such as HubSpot (in the context of CRM and marketing), enables businesses to manage their marketing, sales and service activities in the one place. As a platinum HubSpot partner, BlueRock has identified the following benefits from consolidating our clients systems:
- A more unified and direct way of work that’s easier to onboard and manage performance
- More efficiency and effectiveness in day-to-day operations
- Ability to see a single-view of customer derived from a single source of truth
- Less people working across different systems and different times to drive the same result
- Cost-saving implications from the direct cost of subscriptions (only having to pay for one subscription, as opposed to many)
Centralisation: Uniting Your Core Franchise Software and Operations
An integral part of how franchise software creates great outcomes and results is in the ability to build out procedures to drive sales. Using a platform (such as CIN7 Core (Formerly DEAR Systems) as a centralised inventory, stock management and production solution enables businesses to centralise their functions, integrate it into their applications, and result in a streamlined, continuous flow of events.
CIN7 Core combines all the tools necessary to operate an inventory-based business in one complete system. Its inventory management functionality works to centralise inventory and warehouse management, purchasing and sales, and automates time-consuming tasks – all in one location. CIN7 Core is an effective one-stop-shop that offers business owners and franchisors more functionality, visibility, fewer logins, and lower operating costs.
CIN7 Core also allows companies to build their own workflows with their existing system solutions through integration with (just to name a few):
For further support implementing franchise software for connection, consolidation and centralisation within your franchise system, reach out to our franchising experts for a free consultation.
