Regardless of your industry, if you’re a business leader aiming for success, you need to value the data you receive through key performance indicators. Organizations measure all sorts of KPIs, as does the government, but for the sake of this blog, let’s focus on what’s top of mind for just about every business: sales.
No matter what products your business offers or services it provides, the life span of your brand depends on incoming sales. Watching out for trends related to your sales will help you adjust when you need to. When it comes to franchise management, keeping an eye on quality assurance reviews (QARs) and audit results will help you identify areas that need work and apply training to improve results.
QARs/Audits
Study the results of your latest reviews at each location. How well have the locations done in the past? See where they were performing above average and learn where they have room for improvement.
Stores that perform poorly in an audit are often the same stores that are not following brand standards as closely as franchisors would like. Here are a couple of ways to overcome those bumps in the road:
- Corporate audits – Depending on the company, this can be as often as a quarterly review, or something less, such as yearly. Either way, this is a detailed location review – a white glove approach.
- Self-audits – These can be done as frequently as necessary to help a franchisee stay on track. It’s a much more proactive approach and can help you prepare for the less-frequent corporate audit.
Training
With the detailed information gained in an audit, franchisees can both take corrective action and make plans to prevent problems in the future.
For example, if sales are poor, but audit scores are positive, research the issue further and then provide corrective training at the location in need. This is a fundamental process that needs to be executed when you identify inconsistencies between audit data and other results. More often than not, these problems can be easily resolved.
If sales and audit scores both are positive, you can still implement procedures to gain a better chance of continued positive results. Create proactive training materials that can help a location improve even further. Always stay one step ahead.
Track compensations, track refunds and go-backs – then, if you identify an increase in any of those, you can take that data back to audits and training. The more you analyze data and respond with constructive feedback and options, the more successful and consistent your franchisees will be.
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