Breaking the Limits of Large Franchise Management: How Technology Can Unlock Your Further Growth

Growing an already large automotive service franchise network gets hard mainly because maintaining and managing the entire network becomes challenging. I believe it doesn't have to be a challenge if you utilize modern tech and technology-aided efficient processes.

Let me explain.

Every month, I get to talk with at least 10 franchise network owners and directors and they are thought leaders on their own.

What I can understand from my interactions with them is that maintaining a franchise business is mainly about establishing a decent power dynamic with franchisees.

Only when you have an upper hand over your branding and ROI, you can maintain good relationships with the franchisees.

The best franchisors have learned to do 3 main things-

?? 1) They set out clear-cut targets for the brand and based on that, they derive strong achievable targets for Franchisees. ( Thus, they are able to show clear ROI to franchisees)

?? 2)They understand that franchise retention has a lot to do with their selection itself. Hence they find the best balance in franchisee selection criteria.

?? 3) They understand that delivering a uniform brand experience is the only way to establish solid business fundamentals for growth.

But here’s the challenge even after implementing the above ideas-

?? 1) Even if you train your franchisees with your SOP to maintain uniform branding, they do not have the tools to become consistent.

?? 2) Your business data is entirely reliant on your franchisees. They could make mistakes intentionally or unintentionally. What do you do now?

?? 3) Your planned visits to check for uniform branding experience may not give the correct picture.

?? 4) Your mystery visits to your network can also be not enough. If you personally do the visits, how many will you be able to cover?

?? 5) You as a franchisor do not directly know the CX your end-customers are going through with your brand. Your franchisees are the direct customer-facing people and every customer understanding you get is not directly yours but your franchisee’s.

Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that although the brand/ franchise is yours, you cannot run it as if it’s your own. Your brand reputation is controlled by franchisees.

You cannot bring the level of control you would have if you run a single service outlet to a large franchise network of service outlets. Not without technology.

What’s happening here is that you lack reliable- actionable data & dynamic control over your large franchise network.

Now, imagine the following -

? Imagine if you had a magical tool that could somehow unify your entire network as if they were one single entity. You’re now able to manage the entire country’s network as if they were one single business element.

? Imagine if you no longer had to rely on your franchisees for any business data.

? You now somehow have managerial control over your entire network. You have them at your fingertips. Nothing can slip past you.

? Imagine if you’ve managed to provide some tool that enables all your franchise network to behave and deliver in a uniform way that you originally designed.

? Imagine if you could check your franchisee’s loyalty. Find the loyal and best-performing ones, and reward them. Identify the disloyal ones and help the poor-performing ones. How convenient would it be?

? Now imagine if all your payments, throughout your network, happen on a single platform that you can control. Any discrepancies in service payment will be tracked.

? Imagine being able to run network-wide promotions and track their success without relying on manual communication with each franchisee.

? Now imagine if you’re able to achieve all these without upsetting your franchisees but instead making this whole thing an added benefit for them.

This is the power of modern technology. Embrace it.

There will never be a saturation point to growth when you embrace technologies like GaragePlug.

Think about it.

Book a 15 min chat with me - Meet with Shubhra Srivastava (hubspot.com)