Goodbye 2013, it was good knowing you (although you seemed to go fast) and welcome 2014 ! We had a big 2013, taking on major new clients across a range of industries including financial services, real estate, food retailing, fitness, personal services and others. The main drivers for these new clients looking for franchise management software were all the usual culprits...
Many of our clients use the "News & FAQs" module as a way to communicate with their franchisees. It's such an obvious part of franchise software and a pretty simple module that it often gets overlooked. But following recent conversations with a few clients about how much value they get out of the module we have done some upgrades. It's basically an on-line notice board. You can self publish "news" articles...
We have a nice new feature released today called Notifications. What Are They? It's a simple way to send a short message to another FZM user. It is designed for messages that relate specifically to something in the FZM system, e.g. a Contact, a Franchisee, a Task etc. For example, you have just entered a note against franchisee and you want Joe to know about it. Or a recruitment candidate just got interviewed...
We've given FZM a bit of an update in terms of look and feel. Part of the new look of our franchise software. Flat icons all the way. There has been a bit of a movement towards 'flat' design in software and hatchit is fan of the benefits. The general objective is to take some the 'eye candy' (3D effects and colours) out of the navigational elements and go for a more...
As you know running a franchise network is no small task. There are many people involved and lots of data. Take a few minutes out of your day to think about the data in your business. How is all this information being stored at your franchise? Is it accessible to staff? Is it in a useful format? Is it secure and stored safely? Is it triggering work-flows and processes to make...
We have just updated the Timeline feature to bring a range of new features. Timeline (similar to Facebook Timeline) allows you to instantly see the history of a Franchise/Store and also of a user. At a glance and quickly see everything that has happened in the system regarding a franchisee. So if someone enters a note, or creates a task, set an event etc then it's all recorded in Timeline. Displayed prominently on the...
We have had a lot of requests for this one over the last 6 months, so we're excited to announce that the first version the Feedback module is now available. You can now create a "case" to record feedback you receive from customers. Feedback can be positive / negative or just general feedback, and of course it can be related to a franchisee and soon even a staff member or a product/service. We...
We're very happy to announce that the latest version of FranchiZeManager has just been released. FZM is sporting a new "look and feel" and a range of new features, improvements and advances across pretty much every module of the system. This is about our 5th major update since we first launched the system (originally called FRm - Franchise Management System) many years ago. This upgrade introduces many new back-end features which will allow us...
We released a new little module today called "News". Well, actually we have cheated a little bit, it isn't completely new since it's a rebuild of the "Official Announcements" module, but we have improved it greatly. The purpose of this module is to provide Franchisor support staff with an easy way to publish newsletters and news items for their franchisee (and staff) community. Aside from the usual text and attachments we have allowed a...
Performance measurement and reporting is a crucial part of any business. But in franchising the need to provide quality reporting is even more important. Benchmarking of results across your network can motivate franchisees to improve performance, it appeals to each franchisee's competitive streak and also provides valuable feedback on what is expected and achievable within your network. FranchiZeManager has a specialised module called ScoreCard that is used for reporting, benchmarking and...