Solving Common Challenges for Franchisors
In an article published by Franchise Business March 2015 (http://bit.ly/2slBLTR), Suzanne Jarzabkowska of DC Strategy says, “Market leaders understand that differentiating their product and service experience and leveraging their brand’s USP [unique selling proposition] consistently across their network is critical. This allies to every aspect of their business as it is often the invisible innovation related to staff training, more cost effective systems, direct customer communication, and leading technology that truly defends and extends market share.”
Thanks to today’s innovative technology, it’s becoming easier and easier for people to conduct business from their venue of choice. Some people like to work from home. Others like to roam the globe. Some people prefer to work from the beach! What they all have in common is choice, and that choice is made possible by technology.
When building any kind of business, there are many variables to juggle. Some are under your control, others are not. Technology is one of those variables that are directly under your control. You can decide to make the investment, or you can go cheap and opt for the lowest cost product. Should you decide for the latter, understand one thing. Your competition is going through those same challenges. If your business or industry is competitive, this one variable, technology, can be the deciding factor in who wins the business. All things being equal, the one who has the best technology wins.
For example, let’s take a Business Service Franchise like Co Working Spaces Jay Suites or Regus, which caters to startups and small businesses. Assuming they were both up to par in terms of services, location, and price, if one of them were to up their game and get a little aggressive with their communications technology, it may help one franchise win business from the other. For example, Entrepreneurs are by nature very dynamic people. They need to be everywhere all the time. They’re incubating businesses, and reaction speed is critical to their success. If an Entrepreneur takes all day returning a new prospect’s phone calls because he was out of the office meeting with clients, by the time he returns to his office and checks his messages, that prospect already signed on with someone else! If Jay Suites or Regus, which caters to Entrepreneurs, were to suddenly deploy new technology that enables Entrepreneurs’ office calls to simultaneously ring their cell phones when out of office, resulting in fewer missed calls, that may be the edge they need to make a clean sweep — AND — perhaps even charge a higher price for their premium service! The technology will end up paying for itself in the long run!
Here is another example. A Franchisor wants his business model to be simple to replicate, i.e. cookie cutter. By today’s standards, older technology can be cumbersome to replicate and may result in variances from one location to another. For example, older phone systems may have to be programmed manually, one at a time. While the programming instructions can be easily replicated, the actual system programming is done by hand. As a result, you can’t guarantee that you will get 100% consistency across the board. With newer technology, such as the SimiPlex Cloud Based Solution, all your programming is done in The Cloud, and is easily replicable and scalable. The data is programmed just once, and applied to each new Franchise location as it opens up, ensuring a smooth and consistent presentation every single time. Furthermore, should the Franchisor decide to change a call in menu or call flow, with the touch of a button that change will immediately and automatically be applied to each and every single Franchisee in the world! With peace of mind like this, you can remain ahead of the competition and focus on doing what you do best, which is running your business, without worrying about your communications equipment.
About the Author
Avrohom is the founder of #AskTheCEO Media, a media platform that creates empowered engagement for brands by translating your message into words your customers understand.
Avrohom has over 20 years of technical leadership experience in Telecom, where he helped businesses around the world to install and maintain their communication systems and contact centers. He is a top-ranked global IoT expert by Postscapes.com with a large worldwide following on Twitter and is a frequent speaker on using technology to accelerate revenue growth.
Listen to Avrohom share the latest technology trends, tools, and best practices on #AskTheCEO — broadcast on YouTube, with all shows available on iTunesand Sound Cloud.
