FranConnect Introduces First Performance Management Software to Solve Franchising’s Biggest Challenge: Unit Performance and Success

(HERNDON, Virginia) Feb. 4, 2020 — FranConnect, the leading provider of franchise management solutions, announced today the introduction of FranConnect Optimize, its newest software solution. FranConnect Optimize is the franchise industry’s first performance management solution aimed at helping franchisors solve their biggest challenge: driving performance and accountability at the unit level.

According to a January 2020 survey of 258 franchise operations professionals, FranConnect found that 96% of respondents struggled to drive franchisees’ unit-level success in part because of ineffective processes and systems for following up on audit and visitation findings. Additionally, over half (52%) of respondents said their franchisees did not understand the top three operations activities that had the greatest impact on unit success.

“Growing a franchise system in today’s environment is extremely complex,” said Gabby Wong, CEO of FranConnect. “The most successful franchise brands move beyond compliance management and nurture a consultative relationship with their franchisees to ensure that they have the knowledge, skillset, and tools to perform and succeed. As a result, we determined it was important to create a solution that enables a strategic coaching process, allows brands to codify unit success, and amplifies that expertise across the franchise system.”

FranConnect Optimize replaces the manual and disjointed processes associated with franchisee performance coaching and enables an organization to:

• Plan - Define the characteristics of a successful unit and set an annual success plan for the franchisees;
• Measure – Establish detailed KPIs, success criteria, scorecards, and benchmarks of success. Information can come from any source across the franchise system, within the FranConnect platform, or provided by third-party systems, including point of sale (POS), loyalty management, and data from scheduling software for informed decision-making.
• Monitor – Create standardized processes between the field operations teams and the unit for ongoing monitoring, reporting, and consultation around success plans and scorecards;
• Take Corrective Action – Create automated playbooks or “expert-based action plans,” based on performance against the success plan and scorecards, to be used by the field business consultants. FranConnect Playbooks allow the sharing of best practices and assignment of tasks to team members so they are focused on the right activities at the right time in order to optimize franchisee performance.

“Optimize is the result of years of working in the franchise market and listening to our customers talk about the pain points of rapidly scaling a brand that’s widely distributed, yet has lean corporate resources,” added Wong. “Based on this feedback and our commitment to providing customer value, we set out to create a solution to allow franchisors to link goals and success criteria to insights and actions in order to more consistently drive improved unit performance and accountability across the entire system.”

“Optimize helps franchisors measure franchisee performance in real time and notifies both support staff and franchisees of areas of concern, along with descriptors of the most probable causes and a recommended action plan,” said Joe Matthews, CEO of Franchise Performance Group. “This tool will help the franchisor standardize and elevate its field support from one of ‘compliance’ to one of real strategic and tactical value, driving both the franchisee and support team to address problem areas as they occur. Optimize is going to be a game changer for franchisors.”

Franchisors will be able to learn more about Optimize when it is revealed at FranConnect’s exhibitor booth (#603 )at the upcoming International Franchise Association (IFA) Annual Convention taking place Feb. 8-11, 2020, in Orlando, Florida.

About FranConnect

FranConnect is the leading franchise management software provider. Based on an analytics approach, only its award-winning, unified FranConnect platform engages stakeholders to grow, scale and optimize franchise systems through a connected and complete view of the business from sales to multi-unit and multi-brand performance. Over 800 brands — including 40 of the Entrepreneur’s Top 100 Global Franchises — in 18 countries count on FranConnect to successfully grow their franchise systems. FranConnect customers span all sizes, growth phases, and industries and have grown 44% faster than the broader franchising market. Backed by private-equity investor Serent Capital, FranConnect is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, with global follow-the-sun operations. For more information on FranConnect, visit: www.franconnect.com.