At the heart of the conflict is that in many cases, the IT department is trying to find one approach that fits many different needs of 3,000 different companies! The Franchisor Business Unit is trying to do what is best for the brand, the Franchisee is mostly concerned with what is best for his or her small business and the IT department struggles to design, deploy and manage approaches that meet the needs of all. In many cases, this is a fool’s errand. So what is one to do, give up, go home and schedule some counseling? No. First you need to take a close look at how you define success, and secondly you need to understand the situation and take the steps to mitigate as many challenges as possible.
First, let’s take a look at some of the common objections or obstacles that one would face when implementing a new POS for a Franchise system.
Some franchisees will be upset because they do not believe that they should have to purchase a new POS. “The one I have rings sales just fine. It has worked great since 1992.” This is the “What I have works just fine” defense.
Some franchisees will be pushing for a low-cost, low-functionality approach. “We don’t need the Lexus. Just give us the Corolla.” Let’s dub this the “I don’t care what it does as long as it’s cheap” strategy.
A few of the franchisees will have received their masters degree in information technology from MIT and will inform their constituents: “It is not as hard or as expensive as he says it is. We can get a Lexus for Corolla price. It’s just that this CIO is an idiot.” This is the time-honored “I am smarter than you” method, a favorite at MIT.
Still other franchisees will own other concepts that have done similar projects and want you to know, “that’s not how BetterBrandThanYou did it. It was much better/faster/cheaper with them.” Let’s call these the “You’re not my real dad” folk.
There will likely be a small group of franchisees that constantly remind you about the failed project that happened 10 years ago. Even though you were not involved, they have not forgotten or forgiven the money and the time that the rogue project cost them all of those years ago. Be nice to these “your grandfather used to cheat at poker” people.
Not everyone in the franchisor will deal well with the conflict. An example would be the VP of operations, who used to be an operator herself, who tries to strike a balance that will make everyone happy: “Let’s compromise. Why don’t we provide 2 or 3 different methods that franchisees can chose from? That’s what we did with that last piece of equipment, the widget maker. We approved 3 different models from 3 different vendors, and franchisees got to choose. It worked out great.” Beware of the “Can’t we all just get along?” exec.
As CIO, you know that there is unlikely to be IT support in the stores so you are looking for an approach that is highly reliable and, when it does have problems, is easy to address, preferably remotely. You are also trying to protect the integrity of the data, as it impacts operations, marketing, finance and supply chain. Why doesn’t anyone care about what the IT guy wants in the technology?
Those aren’t small hurdles, but at least we know what to expect.
-Marc
August 13th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Very interesting insights here on the tussle between the large retailer and the franchisee. Down the memory lane it was almost a deja vu moment.
The large retail CIO has to think like an entrepreneur to make it work internally as well as with his partners. We completed that journey a couple of years back by choosing some of the franchisees as the champions (the MIT types) who made life easy.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Hey Todd you are really funny. I am the following type of franchisee:
There will likely be a small group of franchisees that constantly remind you about the failed project that happened 10 years ago. Even though you were not involved, they have not forgotten or forgiven the money and the time that the rogue project cost them all of those years ago. Be nice to these “your grandfather used to cheat at poker” people.
The reason we won’t let you forget is because we do not want to go through that hell again. You really should work in the store on a Saturday night when the POS goes down during the peak hour. Your two options are to serve customers or get on the phone with the help desk and tell them the BIOS settings. Try doing this with two stores at the same time for months on end.
I could care less if the POS system does my employee schedule or inventory. The first and foremost feature it should have is to subtotal the customer’s purchase, add sales tax, and open the drawer. If it does not do this, then you fail.
The POS system should be tested until fails in the home office before being rolled out to 2,000 stores. Once it fails in the stores and the help desk is overwhelmed, then we are back to using adding machines. The $10,000 POS system is then a very expensive paperweight.
The true shame of the whole “rogue project” is that we lost numerous customers that did not want to wait in line and gave our competition a foot hold in the market.
CALL ME SOMETIME. I WOULD LOVE TO TALK SHOP WITH YOU.
August 14th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
John,
Great comment! You have given me a great idea for an article: “A Franchisees Guide To Working With Their 4th CIO in 10 Years”.
I love your point that the Franchisee is just trying to make sure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated (“The last 3 people failed at this, why are we trying again????”) and how the basics like reliability need to come before bells and whistles (“I don’t care if the car can parallel park itself if it tends to breakdown in the middle of rush-hour”)
At the end of the day, as long as both sides realize and respect that the other is trying to do the right thing, that is success.
Thanks again!