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FranConnection 2016: How Small Adjustments to your Franchise System Can Create New Wins
For brands like Nestle Toll House Café and Philly Pretzel Factory, FranConnect has provided a new key cog in the process of advancing franchise sales.
Sometimes it seems as if franchisees and franchisors have completely different priorities. Franchisors say zig. One franchisee prefers to zag. Another franchise owner wants to Zug. And a third multi-unit owner wants to do neither.
It can make for a trying relationship at times, but it also presents a unique opportunity. Shared knowledge can create new wins—sometimes from unexpected sources. There are multiple avenues one can drive to arrive at the same location. For all of the competitive disagreements, there is one thing everyone in franchising agrees on—when franchisees become more successful at a unit level, the entire franchise system benefits.
At this week’s FranConnect ’16 Conference, held by FranConnect at the Gaylord National Hotel and Conference Center just outside Washington, D.C., experienced franchise veterans discussed ways reach that goal more effectively. For Shawnon Bellah, chief operating officer of Nestle Toll House Café, FranConnect provided a new key cog in the process of advancing franchise sales.
But, it took Nestle time to realize the true potential that a fully customized CRM represented to the brand.
“Nestle Toll House Café first adopted FranConnect in 2005, but we did it half-heartedly at first, thinking it would just help us to target franchise sales,” Bellah said. “But, as we began using it, we discovered lots of other uses for the software through a variety of lead generation tools and a fully customized support system. FranConnect has helped us take administrative function out of the hands of our field ops team, and that’s made a huge difference. They used to spend too much time sending too many emails going back and forth, wasting time, and things fell through the cracks. FranConnect allows them to really focus on growing sales and growing franchisee business support.”
Nestle Toll House Cafe is now using three key tools through FranConnect’s platform:
1. Performance Wise: Used to audit each of the cafes in the Nestle Toll House system
2. Tasks: Used to help create accountability for franchise partners, providing them with a direct list of tasks to accomplish based on the audits, and allowing the brand’s franchise business consultants to help them to follow-up
3. Support Tickets: Used by each of Nestle Toll House’s departments to create a committed closure date on all support tickets within 10 days, allowing direct follow-up and tracking
“The best part about all of this is that it’s provided us with a fully customizable dashboard that shows both us as franchisors and our franchise partners insight into what’s ahead, a history of where each of our Café’s has been, and the ability to recognize and reward results. These tools help us to see trends and to improve our franchise system,” Bellah said.
Measuring those trends is critical for positive franchise growth, agreed Ivan Olmedo, director of information technology for Philly Pretzel Factory, and it begins with a set of very specific questions franchisors should ask.
“To set key performance indicators, you need to ask the right questions,” Olmedo said. “What should we measure? How do we measure it? Then, what do you do with that information? That all begins with having the right system in place to capture information so that you can answer all of those questions.”
Philly Pretzel Factory took advantage of FranConnect’s customizable interface, branding their system as “The Pretzel Hub,” and using it as the central station for every facet of the connection between franchisor and franchisee.
“The Pretzel Hub hosts data on everything from cost of goods and sales performance to product ordering systems. It’s eliminated time consuming tasks like having to mail invoices, and replaced them with the ability for us to see data in real time, to see our sales trends daily and compare them with any point in time,” Olmedo said.
Franchisees have quickly responded positively to the expanded system. Average “Pretzel Hub” usage by the brand’s franchisees is 30 minutes per week, higher than it’s ever been before.
“That allows us to increase engagement with our franchise partners,” he said. “And it creates healthy competition. A growing number of franchise systems are sharing more data with their franchisees, and the Performance Wise tool has helped us see the value in that. By next year, we plan to make all of our store sales data available through the Pretzel Hub to the entire system,” Olmedo said.
Bellah agreed that collaboration has to be a two-way street between franchisor and franchisee.
“Make sure you speak a common language with the franchisee, but share the knowledge you have. No one likes being audited. But, at Nestle Toll House, we work to show the positive applications an audit provides. We’ve already seen that help both sides of our franchise system, and we believe it will continue to pay dividends for our brand’s future,” Bellah said.
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