Automated Tech Solutions Save Time and Money

Franchise CEOs, regardless of company size or industry, want to transform their businesses into high-performance and rapid-growth organizations going into 2014. To make this happen, national brands are looking to improve technology in franchise sales, operations and marketing. The constant need for new, innovative technology by franchise brands will help its system become much stronger organizations and help its franchisees increase profitability, resulting in unit growth and more local job creation. 1851 Magazine checked in with Amit Pamecha, CEO and Founder of FranConnect, to learn the top technology issues facing franchise brands and what trends are on the horizon for the industry. [caption id="attachment_11591" align="alignright" width="199" caption="Amit Pamecha, CEO and Founder of FranConnect"][/caption] What technology concerns face franchisees? Franchisors?  Most franchisees have very little time in the day because they have to manage dozens of different things: customer service, employee management, hiring, financing, government paperwork, marketing, sales. In order to effectively manage their time and focus on the most important aspects of growing their business, they need technology to automate most of their tasks, including email and print marketing campaigns, measuring customer satisfaction, employee and unit performance through dashboard tracking and answers to important questions through a franchise intranet. Franchisees also want 24/7 cloud-based systems that require very little hardware or network in their location and can be accessed via mobile or tablet capabilities. This reduces costs to the franchisees, who traditionally had to support technology in their stories or home-based offices. Over the years, franchisors have invested significantly in different kinds of technology platforms — intranets, sales systems, legal and compliance tracking tools, marketing tools, POS systems, etc. The challenge is that most franchisors have very limited resources and even fewer programming or technology personnel. As a result, most of these systems exist as data silos because keeping up with user-training is very hard without the proper support allocated. Franchisors should adopt an integrated approach to technology where systems are seamlessly integrated and there are not five or more interfaces that franchisors and franchisees need to learn. What ROI can brands expect to see after incorporating technology solutions? Our studies have shown that franchisors can expect to see a 20–30 percent decline in their operating costs by automating processes and implementing technology solutions. Beyond that, the right solutions can help sell more new franchises by engaging prospects and converting them into strong leads. Last, but not the least, the addition of automated marketing platforms helps franchisors streamline local level marketing for franchisees to increase customers and revenues. Who specific tools help franchisees the most? What do franchisees really need in today’s business landscape? There are certain factors that franchisees cannot control — the existing brand image, the product selection, the location of the store or the territory they inherited, etc. For the factors a franchisee can control, FranConnect has found local level marketing and sales efforts to be the number one driver of franchisee success. However, marketing channels have expanded across multiple mediums — print, email, social media, SEO, PPC, reputation management, etc., and franchisees cannot manage all these channels or the software. FranConnect developed the ZCubator integrated marketing platform to provide franchisees with an easy to use, automated and integrated solution that does the marketing for them and provides feedback on the Return on Investment. With Zcubator, a franchisee can generate automatic new leads, process lead data in a CRM, send out marketing campaigns, follow Facebook fans and Twitter followers, measure customer satisfaction, etc., without ever having to login to the software side of the system. Beyond that, Zcubator provides franchisees with ROI information from dollars spent on different marketing campaigns. What franchise brands do the best job at embracing new technology solutions? Why? It depends on the industry, the age of the brand, the management team and their openness to technology. We have found technology adoption to be more of a management challenge — younger franchisors want more technology, while established franchise systems are often comfortable with the status quo. What technology trends will emerge in 2014? The top emerging trends will be integration and mobile. Software systems need to be integrated in order to be used effectively. With today’s on-the-go business owner, data, information and applications must to be available on a tablet or mobile platform. Most franchise systems make investments into technology without looking at the holistic picture. Some of the questions to ask are:

• How will my users or franchisees embrace yet another piece of software or technology?
• What are the management and support costs involved in adding another software verse having an integrated solution?
• How well does a vendor understand franchising and franchisee behavior? The best technology in the world is useless if the franchisees decide not to use it.