1. What are my best selling products, in a particular territory or certain period of the year?
Every day, FranchiseBlast automatically collects sales information from the POS. This information is presented in FranchiseBlast's reports section and we allow you to generate reports which include only a subset of your store fleet, if desired. Franchisees can only see the sales information from their stores and multi-unit owners can compare and contrast their own stores.
2. How can I ensure my royalties are fully paid on time?
Because no intervention is required for you to see each store's sale information (thanks to FranchiseBlast), you do not have to wait on your franchisees to compile their monthly sales. Powerful auditing capabilities lets you identify franchisee fraud by comparing usage data with other stores to find anomalies. At any point in time, you know what royalties are due and have the possibility to shut down various software systems should the franchisees be in breach of contract. Additionally, many franchise systems have business processes in place which prevent a rogue franchisee from using a cash register external to the system without raising customer suspicion.
3. Can we open a store in this area without cannibalizing sales from my existing franchisees?
We strongly recommend you establish a frequent buyer program in your franchise. Our POS software allows franchisees to collect member information, which can later be used for marketing purposes. However, this information is also useful the franchisor using FranchiseBlast because they can visualize the average distance between the store and a customer's residence. This is especially useful for franchises which deliver services at the customer's residence.
4. How can I efficiently communicate with my franchisees and their employees?
Over the past decade, franchisors have come to understand the value of a franchise intranet to facilitate collaboration. Reference material and franchisor news are published on FranchiseBlast which is used by all stakeholders. LavaBlast's point of sale system takes this concept to greater heights by including some of these elements inside directly the POS allowing even the cashiers to participate in interesting discussions. All franchise support requests are tracked and monitored in FranchiseBlast.
5. How can I sell on the Internet without spending time duplicating data?
Simple. LavaBlast builds e-commerce websites which are adapted to your business processes. You manage them via FranchiseBlast the same way a franchisee would manage their store. The product information is defined once for the whole franchise and no duplication effort is required.
6. What can I do to distinguish my franchise from the competition?
That's not an easy question to answer but one thing is for sure, technology can help but it is not a panacea. It can help you sell more franchises and attract new customers. To offer a unique selling proposition to their customers, most of our clients utilize interactive kiosks designed to match their franchise concept to appeal to customers and our easy to use remote management software to appeal to new franchisees.
7. How can I promote franchisee collaboration?
The best way to promote franchisee collaboration is to frequently solicit opinions and feedback. This can be done in franchise forums or surveys. However, don't expect them to connect to an online system every night after a long and busy day; that's why we've integrated many collaboration features inside our point of sale software.