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Franchise and Business Opportunities for Entrepreneurs
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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What's Your Secret Sauce?
By Jerrod Sessler, CEO, HomeTask Handyman
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No one ever remembers the team that finishes second in the Daytona 500. The winner has the best memories, the most fun, and takes home the biggest prize. When people discuss brands, the market leaders are always the focus of the conversation. We all desire to see our companies name on top and I believe the effective use of technology can serve as a hidden force to help achieve that goal.
Franchising can revolutionize "business as usual" with the effective implementation of systems that allow people to do more of what they love and less of what they don't. The effective use of technology is key to developing great companies that will provide an exceptional level of support for franchisees. I predict that, over the next ten years, the primary benefit franchisors will license will be their support systems; the brand will be viewed as a bonus.
So, what do I mean by that? We have the ability to enable our staff and franchisees to increase their income while spending more hours investing in their dreams. We have the potential to eliminate the repetitive tasks and foster an environment of progress. We can disrupt the competitive balance in our market by using systems and technology to drive efficiencies within our business. It is a great time to be in franchising!
I have extracted a top ten list of "Do's" to help you begin using technology to dominate your market and accelerate your business.
10. Anticipate change.
The fax machine is archaic and e-mail is being supplemented with a myriad of other communication choices. We rarely send faxes because we have the tools to change paper into PDF files. A handyman service is admittedly not the first place you would look for radical technology advances, but the key to our success is making one of the oldest professions more efficient with the effective use of technology.
9. Get your chalk out.
Benchmark, benchmark, benchmark. Especially outside your industry. Technology is not exclusive-similar systems can serve radically different businesses. One of the role models we used in building the HomeTask system was a clothing wholesale company. They play in a totally different segment, but they do very similar things technically. Because their clients own their individual businesses, this supplier has an opportunity to assist them by providing back-office systems, marketing tools, support, and networking. There is an inspiring book on the subject by Kevin & Jackie Freidberg called "Guts! Companies That Blow the Doors Off Business-As-Usual." The Freidberg's discuss creating a culture that considers the whole person (staff or customer/franchisee) rather than just the activities that person performs during working hours. This concept has had a profound effect on the HomeTask model.
8. Make it visual.
Kids' books are more fun, hold your attention, and are easier to remember than adult books because they are visual. Can you imagine NASCAR without the sea of logos and colors? I can hear the fans now, "Oh, wow, did you see the move that grey car made?" My point here is that we often remember to make something visually interesting for our external customers but forget that when it comes to internal ones. When was the last time you created a really cool intra-office memo or a visually interactive internal survey? Maybe start by painting some accent walls in your office a bright, cheery color and watch the smiles light up!
7. "Cool" counts.
Make it so life-changing for your customers that they rave about it. I am confident that if we didn't offer the tools we do to manage the back-office activities for our franchise partners, they would not be as happy as they are. These folks wanted to simplify their lives. They have a passion for helping others by providing hands-on service in what is often a breeding ground for stress and tension-our homes and offices. Our passion is to enable people to do what they love and have the rest done for them. At HomeTask, our heroic cause is to "Enable Peace...At Home." We are changing lives with our integrated systems. The effective use of technology won't simply make your business thrive; it will make it seem magical.
6. Great marriages communicate.
Your technical systems should hold hands, not boxing gloves. One of the immovable criteria VaultFarm had to work within when creating our systems was that they had to be compatible and communicate freely with each other. I get knots in my stomach when I look at organizations that employ several different systems to accomplish various tasks. Inevitably in these situations, humans are required to be the connector between systems. Your IT systems should serve you, not the other way around. If you have systems that are linked using human touch, I would suggest developing plans to eliminate these circumstances. They are a breeding ground for unhappy staff and mistakes. Unleash many of the staff you have tied down around these systems and watch them grow!
5. Teach your IT team to speak in tongues (P & L, balance sheet, EBIDA).
I am convinced that many of the executives running our companies do not fully understand the value of technology projects partly because their IT team does not present projects in bottom-line terms. Some simple education or adopting the "Open-Book Management" philosophy espoused by Jack Stack, would improve results. Your technical team should understand how their activities impact the financials. This will help them present their ideas and projections with clear financial implications.
4. Start a stretching routine.
Warning! You may not be as tech savvy as you think you are. Just as much as IT needs to learn a financial language, management must fully support technological innovation and be willing to stretch their thinking. Great leaders are grown within great companies. There is no space for complacent leaders if you want to have a great company. In today's market, this means educating yourself on the opportunities associated with technology implementation.
3. Stop for directions.
Thank God for whiteboards! Before you write any code, give your developers some driving directions. Have you ever tried to use a really cool feature on-line but it was hosted on such a slow system that you left before you got started? If it made you say, "Who on earth designed this," then they didn't have a vision! When you set out to solve a problem, deliver a service, or initiate needed change, it is critical to clearly communicate the goals and objectives-the road map- for the changes to all involved in the project. If you fail to do this, the technology will not work correctly and the team will be discouraged because its creation sits unused on the corporate shelf. We use Gantt charts, precedence diagrams, and flow charts before we start the building process. These tools and others are highly beneficial in determining the architecture of a new idea.
2. Redundancy is for computers, not people.
No one enjoys inputting financial data just to "keep things up to date" and many people lack the discipline to do it in the first place. Build this sort of thing into your process so that these tasks don't require a human touch. Think about all the back-office tasks that are very similar for most of our businesses: financial management, order processing, customer communications, internal communications, scheduling, supply ordering, and the list goes on. Franchisors are in a unique position to integrate these services into their systems because the size and scale of the projects needed to do so are often more than a single-operator business could undertake. But, isn't that part of the advantage of franchising? Capitalizing on the efficiencies and opportunities of economies of scale? However, don't sacrifice human interaction in the name of technology. Technology is an improvement if it enables your staff to add more human touch, not less.
1. Simplicity wins!
By its very nature technology is complicated, but our lives should not be. When you think of all the sources of stress in your life, all of them are surrounded by complexity. I have been purposeful about maintaining simplicity in my life these last few years, and it has made a huge impact on my overall happiness. Ultimately, if we can enable peace in people's lives by providing simple solutions, then we will win in the marketplace every time. If our advances in technology do not simplify our lives then they are a waste of time. Technology should be used to encourage the desired path and that path should be of the least resistance.
Perhaps a handyman service business seems like a low-tech business to be touting the benefits of technology, but HomeTask employ's a decidedly high-tech approach to achieve a competitive advantage. This advantage starts on the street where our franchise partners operate their businesses. They are empowered to accomplish and achieve well beyond what would be possible without the technological tools we provide. In fact, our business is possible and profitable because of our heavy use of these concepts.
HomeTask is a unique owner-operated focused handyman franchise system.
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