Technology Feature Articles

Technology Feature Articles

Franchise Sector Showcase

Informative Technology franchise articles to support business buyers, franchisees, and franchisors.

It is a quiet Saturday morning. If you are the average American, the downturn in the economy has started you to think about how it will impact your career and the opportunities for your children as they enter the workforce. Articles about Enron and Tyco and Global Crossing and other corporate scandals abound and some of the most respected brand names internationally are talking about layoffs and bankruptcy.
  • By: Michael H. Seid, founder and managing director of MSA - Michael H. Seid & Associates
  • 27,545 Reads 13 Shares
Before I answer your question I think a bit of historical background is important. Our economy is where it is today because we chose not to learn from what we did in the past. I remember after the bubble broke following the dot-com meltdown we were faced with similar questions. And we moved through those troubled times to what became one of the best environments for the growth of small business and certainly franchising. It is a fact of life in our economic marketplace that business cycles happen. Business cycles in the United States have always produced a beneficial cleansing although living through the corrections is always painful in the short term.
  • Michael Seid
  • 5,470 Reads
It started with a desperate phone call from a distraught daughter at her wit's end. Patricia Maisano was on the receiving end of that call. The woman on the other end of the phone was searching for assistance in caring for her elderly mother. At the time, Maisano was running a health care consulting business in Philadelphia. She was a registered nurse and well-versed in case management. And the phone call had a significant impact on her.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 2,821 Reads 1,021 Shares
Technologists busily reinventing the World Wide Web say franchises can look forward to an Internet where it will be much easier to collaborate, innovate, and to manipulate data and software on a wide variety of Net-friendly devices.
  • Joe Dysart
  • 5,206 Reads 2 Shares
Unfortunately, many franchisors flounder in direct-response recruitment advertising. Typically, their development efforts focus on improving their sales and media sources, with minimal attention paid to increasing ad performance.
  • Steve Olson
  • 3,594 Reads 1 Shares
There's a loud ruckus, a crowd gathers 'round, and a customer is sprawled on the floor next to the soft drink dispenser. The area is covered in soda and ice and the customer laments she slipped, fell, and is injured because of your negligence.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 8,959 Reads 1 Shares
Beyond the unmistakable impact of the Internet and World Wide Web, advances in technologies used every day by franchisees are continuing to change the face of franchising -- and the way franchisees do business.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 3,674 Reads 1,014 Shares
Franchise Update Media Group, the leading industry resource for franchise development, announces that registration is now open for the 10th Annual Franchise Leadership & Development Conference, which will be held at The Drake Hotel in Chicago, Sept. 24-26, 2008. The theme for this year is "Driving Performance in Tough Times."
  • Press Release
  • 3,169 Reads 3 Shares
Every year thousands of franchise companies pour money and other precious resources into lead generation and sales with varying degrees of success. But few rise to the top.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 4,291 Reads 34 Shares
At PuroSystems, the vice president of franchise development has an advantage his peers would envy--if they knew it existed: he can listen in live on a franchise sales call, privately offering advice and feedback to his salesperson as the discussion unfolds.
  • John Carroll
  • 3,415 Reads 37 Shares
When Lino DeFeo bought a Sign-A-Rama franchise in West Palm Beach, Fla., he didn't know much about signs. That was about 15 years ago. DeFeo had sold his trucking business in Manhattan and moved to Florida with his wife Maria and their two young children to join a family business. But that didn't work out exactly as planned. "I got out before we totally killed each other," he says with a laugh.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 9,275 Reads 1,014 Shares
Indevia Accounting
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Indevia Accounting
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The former Soviet Union was a frightening frontier for expanding businesses in the early- to mid-1990s. The former communist country was experiencing growing pains as it left behind decades of closed existence and began embracing a new economy built around more of a free market-based environment. And it was just this setting that Jake Weinstock and Paul Kuebler dived into headfirst.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 7,882 Reads 1,014 Shares
"I don't care about numbers and notes on a piece of paper; it only matters if you actually close the sale."
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 3,296 Reads 5 Shares
A really hard job for any franchise company's tech department is coordinating all the different systems in franchisee locations. As everyone gets more and more dependent on standardized machines and programs, it's easy to think that the basics are taken care of.
  • Ripley Hotch
  • 3,037 Reads 5 Shares
Last Saturday, mom and dad packed the kids into the minivan and headed out to the fitness center (Curves for her and Athletic Republic for him). First they dropped the kids off (one at Huntington Learning Centers, the other at Abrakadoodle). Before they left, they'd made sure the woman from Bathfitters knew exactly what they wanted done with their new shower, and reminded the man from Spring-Green to cut the back lawn extra short this week.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 4,504 Reads 1 Shares
Sure, you're measuring your advertising spending and marketing budget. But are you measuring the numbers that matter? Savvy franchisors who do are reaping bigger rewards at significantly lower costs.
  • Steve Olson
  • 8,623 Reads 1,023 Shares
As the "franchise world" turns toward technology that allows us to respond automatically through emails, send links to articles, and educate customers through "mass information" emails, we may be looking past a simple premise of selling such as "building a relationship."
  • Marc Kiekenapp
  • 3,475 Reads 6 Shares
Looking back at how technology has evolved in franchising, by far the most significant changes have taken place in the area of lead management. Some industry experts trace the first concerns over franchise lead management back to right around the invention of fire, while others maintain the issues arose later on in evolution, shortly after Nixon resigned. No matter. Franchise lead management and the use of technology for other mission-critical functions in franchising have come a long way in the past 20 years.
  • Dan Martin
  • 4,262 Reads 12 Shares
The franchise community landscape was dramatically different for executive search 20 years ago. When we began servicing the hiring needs of franchisors in 1983, the franchisor population was in the hundreds, with almost all franchisees, owners of individual locations. A very small number of U.S. franchisors had any international presence.
  • Doug Kushell
  • 3,326 Reads 5 Shares
So Franchise UPDATE is now 20 years old! When Ripley Hotch asked me to reflect upon developments in franchise law over the last two decades, I was honored. After all, I was there - the whole time and much before! I have been fortunate enough during my career to have served as a member of, a contributor to, or observer for, many of the groups that have influenced the direction of franchise law, and I have read hundreds of precedents that have made franchise law what it is today.
  • Rupert M. Barkoff
  • 3,350 Reads 1,014 Shares
Remember pulling up to the Jack in the Box drive-thru in the 1970s and placing your order through an over-sized talking Jack head where the voice on the other end sounded like a grown up from a Charlie Brown cartoon. You had no idea what the person on the other end was saying or how your order would turn out. Times have changed and the evolution of technology in the fast food industry is picking up the pace - and making the fast food arena one full of strong franchise opportunities.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 33,498 Reads 7 Shares
Tint World
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Tint World
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Life was easier for a franchise sales person in 1987. There were fewer media, fewer regulations, and what prospects knew about your brand was mostly what you told them.
  • Steve Olson
  • 3,439 Reads
Twenty years ago, when you wanted to know what was happening in your stores, you might have called in mystery shoppers. They would clock how quickly your front-line employees were greeting customers, whether your store displays followed the plan-o-gram, and whether your operations manual was in play.
  • Bill Fromm
  • 3,526 Reads 9 Shares
From Mail Boxes Etc. to The UPS Store, a quick history; or, 27 years in 90 seconds or less.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 10,720 Reads 7 Shares
If history has taught us anything, it’s that not all good things from the past necessarily follow us into the future. Employee attitudes and work ethics that were around two decades ago are no exception.
  • Gloria Plaisted
  • 4,706 Reads 1 Shares
In professional sports, successful players and teams, can be made or broken by the quality of the coaching. It's no different in the business world. There are so many businesses and executives today who need help in sharpening up fundamental skills, coaching team members, or assistance in growing departments. As a franchise business consultant, you can provide some relief and help them make the right call.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 2,403 Reads 4 Shares
Since 1653, when Izaak Walton published The Compleat Angler, "compleat" has come to mean many things beyond what Walton described as "a Discourse on Fish and Fishing." The dictionary tells us it means classic or quintessential. But compleat also implies mastery far beyond the basics, conjuring up words like visionary, leader, even master.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 3,978 Reads 7 Shares
This issue's Tech Talk takes a look into four ways franchise companies are using technology to improve their business: 1) integrating digital surveillance with POS systems; 2) contactless retailing; 3) protecting the brand in the online era; and 4) using an online service to track promotions and referrals.
  • 3,741 Reads 1 Shares
This issue's Tech Talk looks at two ways area developers can save time and money by using technology to improve their management and operations: 1) using Web-based software to conduct online meetings for all or some of their sites; and 2) using in-store cameras to improve operations on the fly and provide a digital record that can improve customer relations and protect employees at the same time.
  • Ripley Hotch
  • 2,830 Reads 4 Shares
Training: the second leg of the hiring, training, and retaining triathlon so many multi-unit operators struggle to complete every day. Area Developer asked training experts at three brands - Regis Corp., Little Caesars, and PuroSystems - about their training programs - and how an emphasis on a high-quality training program, incorporating innovation and technology, remains a cornerstone of their growth strategy.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 5,371 Reads
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