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Franchisees See Retail Chain CIOs As Being Out Of Touch With Reality
I like to say that, technically, north is anything between west and east. Just because everyone in the organization is heading north, doesn’t mean that everyone is in fact heading in the same direction. The challenge in this situation is that while everyone has the same goal, all the parties involved have different motivations and are impacted differently by decisions.
So what can be done from reducing the amount of churn in an environment like this? It really depends on what the corporate culture will accept, but here are my Top 10 Suggestions.
Solid requirements are Priority #1 Set the expectation with leadership that detailed requirements will be gathered, documented and signed-off prior to any other project work being started. In my opinion, lack of solid requirements to start a project is the number one failure point of IT projects in general, but it is amplified 1,000 percent in a Franchise environment.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, one word from a Franchisee is worth a thousand words from you. The Franchisee leaders in your organization, both formal and informal, carry the greatest amount of influence of the project success. Franchisees want to know that their peers are supportive of the project. A Franchisor CIO should work hard to keep these Franchisees leaders highly involved, especially those that are not supportive of the project.
Respect the Franchisee investment. Imagine that your CEO has called you and your peers on to a confernce call. During this call he informs you that the company has decided to implement a new Career Development System. In order to fund the project, they will be reducing everyone’s salaries and bonuses. You know nothing about Career Development Systems and you are more than a little upset that you weren’t given more input into the decision to spend your compensation on a company project. Realize that this is how many Franchisees feel when approached with new IT projects.
Determine the Franchisees role in the project. Are they advising? Are they making the decision? Are they just being informed? This will vary depending on culture and the project, however once you decide what the Franchisee’s role is, stick with it. This decision will guide your communications plan with the Franchisees.
Scope Creep = Death. Super-critical, can’t-live-without requirements will magically appear half way through the project. Unless the requirement is a complete show-stopper, you need to move it into a later phase of the project. The number two killer of IT projects is “scope creep” and it tends to be rampant in Franchise environments. It may sound simple, but if you never finish gathering requirements, you never finish the project.
-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!