When one of the over 120 Velofix franchisees pulls up to a customer’s home to handle a bike repair, the company’s Founders already know about it. As the fastest growing chain of bike “shops” in North America, and ranked the second-fastest growing mobile franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine, they rely on franchise management software to keep track of their entire operation.
Here are some of the ways franchise management software helps mobile franchises like Velofix stay organized and enjoy steady growth.
1. Centralized Online Booking
One of the biggest sources of overhead for a mobile franchise is the booking process. The old way of phone bookings or back-and-forth via email is time-consuming and requires a lot of human effort on both sides. What’s more, admin staff do not always have an opportunity to sell a full suite of services to customers, unless they take care to list all of the options and pricing.
With centralized online booking, mobile franchises like Velofix leave it to the customer to do the booking. They start by choosing their location, which matches the booking with a local franchisee. Then they select the services they want, a la carte, and have transparent price quotes instantly.
2. System-Wide, Multi-Location Scheduling
As part of the online booking process, individual franchisees set their availability based on their work schedules, franchise territory and ZIP codes. When customers choose their bookings, the schedules for the franchisee gets completed “on the fly.” If they prefer to service certain areas of town of certain days of the week, they set their availability accordingly, and the customer chooses the appointment themselves.
3. Simpler Administration for Franchisor and Franchisees
All of this convenience of online booking and scheduling means a huge savings of time for the franchisors and franchisees alike. This leaves plenty of margin on the table. Instead of requiring team members at each location working on bookings, the jobs appear on the calendar for them, and they can focus on completing the jobs. “We estimate that online booking has saved us nearly 90% of job booking costs, versus if we had to handle those same job bookings via our Customer Care team,” says Velofix Co-Founder Boris Martin.
This kind of proven model also allows for scalable growth of franchises. When franchisors can offer turnkey solutions that include booking and scheduling, it’s much easier for new franchisees to see the value and buy in.
4. Paperless Invoicing and Automated Billing
When a job is complete, the franchisee can “check out” or mark the job as complete on their mobile device. Then they can either accept payment on site, or instantly send an invoice via email containing a payment link. In either case, the process is paperless and tracked in the records of both the franchisor and franchisee.
5. Measurement of Key Metrics, Franchise-Wide
Not only can the franchisee have a detailed record of their sales performance, but head office can too. And the measurement options don’t stop there. Jobs per rep, jobs per day, revenue per job, and myriad other reports can be accessed by the local owner/operators and the master franchisor. With dozens of different metrics being measured, any opportunities or weaknesses can be identified and addressed.
The conveniences of franchise management software are many, making it an obvious choice for mobile franchises. It’s a decision that pays off in decreased overhead, better time management, and transparent tracking of performance for the entire organization.
