Card Connection Franchisees Introduce Hand Held Terminals to Increase Productivity by 20%

By: Card Connection | 0 Shares 76 Reads

April 29, 2008 // Franchising.com // - Leading greeting card publisher and franchisor, Card Connection, has today announced that some of its franchisees have been making gains of up to 20% in their productivity with the introduction of new electronic hand-held terminals which allow stock levels to be calculated automatically on-sight.

Card Connection franchisees place greeting card ranges in retail outlets such as Total, Costcutter, Budgens, Londis, Spar and Shell on a consignment basis. Regular merchandising is required to ensure displays are kept fresh and up-to-date.

"The new electronic terminals now allow us to record all stock movements automatically," explains Pat Blake, Card Connection franchisee for Dublin. "This avoids the need to consolidate and marry-up paper trails in order to produce invoices – these can now be created instantly. This is saving around two days admin per week and means I can now spend that time with my customers and prospecting for new business."

"Currently, 30% of our franchisees have introduced the hand-held terminals and we are well on target to roll these out to our entire franchisee team by the end of the year," confirms Robina Every, managing director of Card Connection. "As well as a reduction in admin and the use of paper, the terminals have also allowed us to improve our customer service levels still further as franchisees can produce reports or duplicate invoices instantly, on site if required by a retail manager.

"The introduction of the new terminals underlines our continued commitment to developing innovative ways to help our franchisees further improve the profitability of their businesses," continues Every. "This, and the fact that the greeting card sector is essentially a recession-proof business, has resulted in our franchises remaining some of the most popular in the franchise industry today."

Because the franchise networks in the UK and Ireland are complete, the available opportunities now consist of acquiring an already-established territory from an existing franchisee. These vary in price according to their level of development, but start at £20,000 (+ stock) with earnings potential in excess of £50,000 per annum.

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