Digitalising your franchise business is critical to succeeding in the digital economy. There are three aspects of digitalising, and they include digital business management, digital marketing and implementing the right digital solutions for the digital transformation of business units.
Digital business management refers to undertaking all aspects of managing a business in the digital age. Digital marketing focuses on online brand building and customer acquisition. And finally, digital solutions are the technology platforms or software used to support business management and marketing activities.
When it comes to a franchise business, two types of digital solutions are essential for franchise success and growth.
- Operations management software – a digital solution to manage all the operational workflows of running a franchise outlet.
- Franchise management system – a digital solution to manage the franchise network, relationship, onboarding, SOPs, training, and quality auditing.
Both types of digital solutions represent two sides of the same coin when it comes to managing a franchise business in the digital age.
In this article, we will be focusing on operations management solutions and how they can exponentially improve and streamline a franchise organisation’s operation to achieve operational scalability.
Operations Management Software & Operational Scalability
Operational scalability is the ability of franchise businesses to replicate, adapt and transfer the operational model of the franchise business operations.
This means having the ability for franchisees to reproduce the franchise’s structures, processes, products or services, and habits.
To achieve operational scalability, the franchise needs to standardize its most critical workflows so that a franchisee can follow them more easily. This can be executed through well-designed software.
This software is also known as franchise management system, business management software, business processes management software, process management solution, workflow management, or enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
Operations management software can clearly define and automate the process flows from customer engagement to service delivery, procurement, warehouse and inventory, manufacturing, and budget control to human resources management. The software helps to unify the data in the various departments under one digital platform so that the franchisor’s operations work more productively and efficiently.
Why Invest in Implementing an Operations Management Software When Scaling Your Franchise?
Operations management software standardizes the operational processes of a franchise and brings about lasting benefits, both tangible and intangible to the franchise business system. Some of these benefits are as follow:
Real-time decisions for both the franchisor and franchisee
Having real-time information to make real-time decisions can make a big difference in the success of the franchise unit and ultimately impact the franchise brand value.
Cost efficiency for both the franchisor and franchisee
Operations management software helps both the franchisor and franchisee to reduce costs and onboarding time by eliminating unproductive or laborious activities. This also means a smaller support team may be needed in terms of management layers, accelerates information flows, and eliminates the errors and rework caused by multiple handoffs.
More engagement within the franchise network
Operations management software allows more collaboration between franchisors and franchisees.
Improved workflows for both franchisor and franchisee
Having the operational workflow designed on an operations management platform increases your workforce’s uptime. This frees up time and effort can be focused on their day-to-day activities.
Faster franchisee onboarding
Leveraging business management solutions for scalability takes away a lot of operational guesswork for franchisees.
Increase franchise network productivity
With an operations management system, franchisors can enhance overall workflows by leveraging data analytics and using data to reduce service delivery and internal reporting steps. Franchisees can also enjoy the benefits of business automation to reduce their repetitive manual processes even though they are only starting up in their entrepreneurial journey
Economies of scale
Franchisors can use the software to combine data, track trends, the volume of purchases to reap economies of scale, budgetary control and implement more efficient manpower deployment through the business management suite.
Transparency and visibility
Franchisors can have total visibility on their franchisee operations network to increase accountability. Franchisors can also better control the supply chain for better quality assurance
Improves quality for customer services
Franchisors can better control the customer’s service experience by standardising the process flows. By reducing guesswork and onboarding time, operations management software helps everyone on the team know what to do when, establishing clear ownership of processes. By minimising repetitive and redundant workflows, franchisees and their team may have more time to franchisors can have access to real-time franchisee operational workflow data.
Seamless compliance
Implementation of operations management software across various departments in the franchisor organisation and subsequently across franchised units means there is a single, integrated reporting system for all processes across all levels. This automation means the need for specific reporting is automated
Reduction in IT costs
The right operations management solution will consolidate your IT costs and improve efficiency. It does this by ensuring that the expenditures associated with supporting and using multiple systems are consolidated into one single cost. This results in cutting spending on replicated, incompatible different systems, thus reducing the need for maintaining multiple software licenses and reducing the infrastructural support required.
