What Entrepreneurs Have to Know (+ Examples)

I‘m going to share a bit inside baseball with you. After I noticed the subject ’AI and franchising,‘ I used to be nervous. It’s a distinct segment topic, and I wished to cowl extra than simply the anticipated franchises. You understand, the well-known quick meals franchises. (Though you will see that a few of that on this article, too.)

Anywho, I used to be nervous as a result of I believed I wouldn‘t be capable to converse on to any franchises which might be presently utilizing AI. Thankfully, I used to be blessed to listen to instantly from franchise organizations and individuals who work with them to implement AI tech. Lengthy story brief? I’ve gone from *chilly sweats nervous* to tremendous excited to share what I’ve realized with you!

Desk of Contents

How AI Is Utilized in Franchising

Under, you‘ll discover varied examples of how you should use AI inside your franchise group. I’ve additionally gathered insights from AI consultants — or consultants in a related area — and corresponding examples of every use case.

Advertising and marketing

Round 75% of entrepreneurs use AI to scale back handbook process time. Handbook duties embody something from picture era, video enhancing, and content material manufacturing. Nevertheless, one space the place AI excels specifically is sourcing and organizing knowledge. That‘s as a result of AI instruments can course of and collate huge quantities of information in minutes, seconds even. People merely can’t outpace the tech right here. The excellent news? We will ‘leverage’ (sorry) it!

Past collating and organizing knowledge, 44% of entrepreneurs discover AI very efficient at analyzing knowledge. Though, in terms of evaluation, I‘d suggest at all times maintaining a human within the driving seat. It’s all too simple for AI to overlook a nuance within the knowledge {that a} human conversant in your franchise’s internal workings may not.

In Motion

Ben Goodey, the founding father of Spicy Margarita Content material and the web optimization podcast and case research group How the F*ck, shares how he makes use of AI to help knowledge group and evaluation. Extra particularly, he discusses utilizing AI to hurry up his location-based key phrase analysis course of.

“One in all my favourite makes use of of AI is to scan by tons of key phrase analysis to seek out the subject I am searching for,” says Goodey. “For franchise companies, that is actually helpful as it may be used to assist them discover location-based key phrases, which with the fitting method helps their franchises win extra clients of their space.”

Goodey explains how his consumer Eton, who gives enterprise valuation providers, has many location-based key phrases like ‘enterprise valuation providers in Los Angeles’ for his or her area of interest. That is as a result of a number of the authorized elements of the work change based mostly on location.

Very similar to a franchise enterprise, Eton works throughout all these areas, so a part of the web optimization technique contains making a regionally focused web page optimized for every space.

He provides: “AI is absolutely helpful right here. You’ll be able to obtain a CSV of all the’ enterprise valuations’ key phrase group, which has 1000s of key phrases and would take hours to sift by. Then, add it to ChatGPT and ask it to create one other column that flags if there’s a location within the key phrase phrase. It makes it actually fast to seek out your location-based key phrases and begin constructing pages to rank and assist clients discover you in these areas.”

Knowledge Discovery and Accessibility

Analysis reveals that just about 40% of information leaders cite the “rising quantity and number of knowledge” as a major AI roadblock. That stated, while you equip your franchise with the right tooling and a strong AI enterprise integration roadmap, it‘s a lot simpler to wrangle your knowledge. The truth is, the sheer quantity of information at your fingertips can grow to be your online business’ greatest power.

In a franchise setup, AI can assist you perceive what’s taking place throughout lots of and even 1000’s of areas. Relying in your chosen AI software, even non-tech-savvy stakeholders in a franchise community can effortlessly search, uncover, and use knowledge. That could possibly be something from sourcing particular buyer info to location-based income figures.

In Motion

Dexter Chu, head of promoting at knowledge enablement platform Secoda, shares their tackle how franchises can use AI to make knowledge extra accessible all through a company.

He explains that AI knowledge catalog instruments enable customers “to ask inquiries to their knowledge in pure language to self-serve insights they would not have entry to in any other case.” Additional, AI can floor developments, detect anomalies, and “provide predictive insights to optimize operations throughout totally different franchise areas.”

German hypermarket chain Kaufland E-commerce operates very similar to a franchise. It makes use of Secoda’s AI-driven platform for knowledge discovery, accessibility, and evaluation. By the no-code platform, they’ll construct and keep “a consolidated view of all knowledge belongings.”

Moreover, Kaufland’s knowledge and analytics staff “built-in documentation into their desk creation course of to make sure all knowledge is verified and updated, decreased time to perception, and elevated transparency.”

Buyer Assist

Round 67% of consumers anticipate corporations to resolve tickets inside three hours. In the meantime, over 90% of CRM leaders say AI has improved customer support response instances. It is no surprise, then, that companies of all types, together with franchises, are adopting AI to assist with buyer help.

In Motion

Relating to franchises, specifically, there are quite a few methods your group can enlist AI for buyer help. Be that by AI-powered chatbots, self-service assets, and even personalised in-app suggestions based mostly on consumer preferences.

After interviewing a number of consultants concerning the professionals and cons of AI in customer support, I’ve a phrase of warning … For all AI’s benefits, together with quicker response instances, it may by no means change the human contact.

AI ought to release your service staff to spend extra time on human-centered duties that transfer the needle.

AI mustn’t change the human contact that usually prevents service points from escalating, resulting in sad clients, and eventually churning.

Automation

Dexter Chu says AI instruments and knowledge catalogs “provide franchises the power to automate handbook duties and get extra time again of their day.” Automation would possibly embody something from advertising, knowledge discovery, and buyer help. Franchises additionally use AI to automate stock administration, reporting, and useful resource allocation.

In Motion

Returning to Kaufland E-commerce, I like how they used Secoda’s announcement function to automate stakeholder communication. This function informs related stakeholders of any adjustments to essential belongings.

In response to the case examine, Secoda routinely grabs the lineage relationships between every knowledge supply within the occasion of a schema change. Then, Kaufland E-commerce triggers a notification to the downstream house owners through Slack. Which means that folks all through the group (together with throughout a number of areas) “are at all times up-to-date with the most recent adjustments and may simply collaborate.”

Advantages of AI and Franchising

So, what are the important thing advantages for franchises that combine AI into their operations? I dove into knowledge and reached out to consultants for solutions.

Time Financial savings

I used to be lucky to talk to Joseph Conlon, the digital director on the franchise group We Make Footballers. He shares a number of the key advantages they’ve discovered by integrating AI instruments into the franchise, all culminating in saving their staff time.

“As a franchise group, we’ve got discovered a whole lot of worth in utilizing AI instruments,” says Conlon. “We often depend on ChatGPT for duties like analyzing copywriting, automating routine stories, and responding to critiques personally. Moreover, we use generative imaging strategies, reminiscent of eradicating backgrounds from pictures of our coaches and eradicating ‘off model’ materials from our pictures.”

Conlon explains how the insights the staff has gained from AI’s means to interpret their varied knowledge sources and supply recommendations have been invaluable. He provides: “We’re saving time, value, and useful resource by adopting these instruments and can proceed to include extra instruments because the business continues to evolve and we discover extra use circumstances for AI to help.”

Wanting on the knowledge, AI is about to proceed saving us time. The Thomson Reuters Way forward for Professionals report finds that: “Respondents predicted that synthetic intelligence (AI) has the potential to avoid wasting them 12 hours per week within the subsequent 5 years, or 4 hours per week over the upcoming 12 months – equating to 200 hours yearly.”

Elevated Productiveness

When you and your franchise staff save time by AI, it is sensible that general productiveness will increase. The truth is, “Companies utilizing AI-driven knowledge instruments have seen as much as a 40% enhance in productiveness,” says Secoda’s head of promoting, Dexter Chu.

A part of this elevated productiveness comes from utilizing AI instruments to “automate repetitive duties reminiscent of knowledge documentation, metadata administration, and question decision.” Chu provides, “This reduces the handbook workload on franchise workers, permitting them to concentrate on higher-value actions reminiscent of customer support or strategic development initiatives, with decision-making pace rising by as much as 10x.”

Diminished Operational Prices

What’s the affect of clawing again your staff’s time and rising productiveness? Diminished operational prices. Don’t simply take my phrase for it. Joseph Conlon talked about his franchise group saving “value and useful resource by adopting these instruments.” Dexter Chu mirrors this level, citing “a 60% discount in knowledge administration prices” by AI tooling.

Returning to the Way forward for Professionals report, we are able to see how saving as much as 12 hours per week throughout the subsequent 5 years might affect billable hours. The report states, “For a US lawyer, this might translate to an extra $100,000 in billable hours.” Additional, the time saved might stack as much as the “equal of including an extra colleague for each 10 staff members.”

Challenges of AI and Franchising

Under, I share insights from a franchise group and AI consultants who work with franchises to implement the expertise. We get into it concerning the challenges that include AI and franchising.

Figuring out Use Circumstances

Joseph Conlon from the franchise group We Make Footballers shared the various advantages he and his staff have skilled utilizing AI above. He was additionally beneficiant sufficient to share a number of the challenges he confronted.

“Our preliminary problem was figuring out the perfect use circumstances for AI inside our enterprise,” says Conlon. “There have been seemingly limitless pathways we might go down which initially felt fairly overwhelming and not possible to realize with the related prices.”

He provides, “Every totally different stakeholder within the firm, from Advertising and marketing to Operations to Tech, wanted various totally different duties or processes automated, generated or made extra accessible. In all circumstances, there have been totally different precedence ranges and orders of magnitude and complexity.”

To beat this, We Make Footballers labored with an AI Consultancy referred to as Delegaite to establish “a pathway in direction of what could be most helpful for our group and constructed out a roadmap of how we’d attain our north star.”

Deciphering Knowledge

Constructing their roadmap meant “bringing all our knowledge sources into one knowledge platform that we might then analyze.” Past that, the following step “took many painstaking months.” We Make Footballers targeted on decoding this knowledge and making certain they might reference it accurately when required.

Conlon explains that this required a whole lot of handbook evaluation and reconfiguring the in-house expertise ecosystem, “which had each monetary and useful resource implications.”

He provides: “We’re very early within the journey, and a part of the problem is just not getting carried away with what’s presently potential or could possibly be potential. We’ve to be affected person with the method and construct {our capability} over time and in alignment with our strategic targets.”

Knowledge Silos

John Pennypacker, VP of Gross sales and Advertising and marketing at Deep Cognition, shares one of the important challenges the corporate has encountered when implementing AI options for franchise networks.

“Franchises, by nature, function as semi-independent entities, typically with their very own localized methods and knowledge assortment strategies,” says Pennypacker. “This decentralization can create a maze of disconnected knowledge silos that hinder the effectiveness of AI implementations throughout all the franchise community.”

He provides, “We labored with a big quick-service restaurant franchise that wished to make use of AI to optimize stock and predict buyer demand. Whereas the company workplace was desperate to roll out a network-wide AI resolution, we shortly found that every franchise location had its personal point-of-sale system, stock monitoring methodology, and even totally different naming conventions for menu gadgets.”

Pennypacker explains how this fragmentation meant it needed to undertake an enormous knowledge standardization mission earlier than the staff might even start coaching its AI fashions. The mission took months of collaboration with franchise house owners to align knowledge codecs, create common APIs, and “set up a centralized knowledge lake that would feed our AI methods with constant, high quality knowledge from all areas.”

“The problem wasn’t simply technical – it was additionally deeply human,” says Pennypacker. “We needed to navigate the issues of franchise house owners about knowledge privateness, the potential lack of autonomy, and the worry of being in contrast unfavorably to different areas as soon as all the info was centralized and analyzed.”

In response to Pennypacker, overcoming this problem required a fragile steadiness of technical innovation and alter administration. “We ended up creating a hybrid AI mannequin that would work with each standardized and non-standardized knowledge, together with a phased implementation method that allowed franchise house owners to see the advantages step by step, constructing belief within the system over time.

“This expertise taught us that in franchising, the success of AI isn‘t simply concerning the algorithm – it’s about creating a knowledge ecosystem that respects the distinctive nature of franchise networks whereas nonetheless enabling the ability of centralized AI insights.”

Examples of AI Franchising

Now, it is time to see AI and franchising in motion. I relay the direct expertise of franchise organizations and people who work with franchises particularly to combine AI. I additionally share examples from franchise outfits it’s possible you’ll already know and love.

Hopefully, there‘s a spread of inspiration that’ll assist you to wherever you’re in your AI and franchising journey.

We Make Footballers

Joseph Conlon, the digital director of We Make Footballers, has already shared the advantages and challenges they’ve confronted with AI. Now, he shares extra particulars about how the franchise group integrates AI throughout the enterprise.

“We began the journey of utilizing AI in our franchise group some 12 months in the past,” says Conlon. “We’re presently utilizing GenAI inside a variety of on a regular basis instruments reminiscent of graphics manufacturing, creating franchise coaching modules, video enhancing on Podcasts, e mail content material manufacturing, and copywriting.”

He provides: “At a extra refined stage, we’re starting to make use of it to investigate giant knowledge units throughout our group and supply insights and evaluation that will not be potential (or a minimum of be extraordinarily time intensive) by human remark.”

Conlon explains that these insights assist the staff perceive franchise efficiency, advertising evaluation, and buyer expertise developments throughout the enterprise. Plus, they’ll “shortly flag up points that may happen and primarily question all our knowledge units on demand.”

To make AI work for them, We Make Footballers have “offered coaching for all our head workplace workers and beneficial our franchisees to undertake the accountable use of AI the place it is sensible throughout the supply of their group.”

My ideas? I like how We Make Footballers use AI to work with giant knowledge units throughout the group. It is laborious to disclaim that AI has a bonus over people relating to how shortly it may course of knowledge.

That stated, you will need to additionally acknowledge how important knowledge permission safety is on this effort. That is why I additionally love how We Make Footballers have educated their head workplace workers with “accountable use of AI” in thoughts.

Lanch/Blissful Slice

The Co-Founder and CEO of Torg, an AI-powered platform for sourcing meals and beverage merchandise, Hans Kristian Furuseth, contacted me to share how they work with Lanch/Blissful Slice. For context, Lanch/Blissful Slice is Germany’s seventh-largest franchise chain.

Furuseth explains how the franchise sought producers to supply for his or her eating places. “They have been searching for producers for a variety of merchandise,” says Furuseth, “together with pizza crusts that that they had unsuccessfully tried to supply with a standard procurement consultancy the place they, after three months, had solely gotten three quotes, all above their goal value.”

He provides: “They, subsequently, wished to check Torg. Inside two weeks, they obtained 15 quotes from prime producers, most beneath their goal value.”

When you’ve learn actually something I‘ve written about AI, you’ll know I am an enormous fan of maintaining people entrance and middle. For instance, the standard and effectiveness of components like content material writing or customer support can quickly nostril dive with out human intervention. Nevertheless, for some duties, AI is extra environment friendly than people.

For this franchise, the distinction was between ready three months for 3 pizza crust quotes or receiving 15 quotes inside two weeks. Nevertheless, my instincts say there could possibly be even larger success by merging a human staff with AI right here. However that is based mostly on my observations and lots of interviews with other people utilizing AI of their companies.

McDonald’s

Relating to the drive-thru, McDonald’s has used AI-powered expertise in a number of methods. The primary one I am going to discuss is my favourite: order prediction.

I like how McDonald‘s makes use of AI for dynamic menu boards. Their system analyzes exterior components like climate and time of day to suggest gadgets. As an example, it’d spotlight sizzling drinks and luxury meals on a wet day and share them on digital shows. This stage of personalization helps McDonald’s create a greater buyer expertise and drive gross sales.

The second use of AI is one thing McDonald’s has just lately walked again since launching the service in 2021. McDonald‘s has been testing drive-thru voice AI for the previous few years. By the expertise, the franchise might provide automated order-taking (AOT). Though McDonald’s representatives say “there have been successes so far,” they’re now exploring “voice ordering options extra broadly.”

In my humble opinion, one thing just like the drive-thru continues to be finest served with the human contact. Why? Effectively, it is referred to as quick meals for a cause. I can solely think about how irritating it could possibly be if the AOT misunderstood your order or received it flawed. Then, a human needed to resolve your order anyway. That is including a piece of time onto what you had deliberate to be a fast breakfast earlier than work.

Anytime Health

The franchise Anytime Health has built-in AI into its app to supply personalised buyer experiences. Extra particularly, the app gives personalized exercise plans and diet recommendation. By analyzing consumer knowledge — like exercise frequency, preferences, and even private health targets — AI can generate personalized plans that adapt as members progress.

In response to Gartner, “over 80% of organizations anticipate to compete primarily based mostly on CX.” The crux? Personalization is more and more changing into the distinction maker in terms of buyer expertise. That is why I admire the extent of personalization on this use case. It not solely retains members motivated but in addition helps them obtain their targets extra successfully.

It Does not Take Grandiose Adjustments for AI to Impression Your Franchise

You need not make grandiose organizational adjustments to make AI in franchising be just right for you. Slightly purposeful motion goes a great distance. Take the franchise Lanch/Blissful Slice, for instance. By adopting a single software, they sped up sourcing producers to supply for his or her eating places by months.

Then take We Make Footballers, who’ve used AI of their franchise for a couple of 12 months. The use circumstances are various with duties like analyzing copywriting, automating routine stories, and responding to critiques personally. Nonetheless, they’ve taken a grounded and gradual method to implementing the expertise.

As a company, they acknowledge that a part of the problem “is just not getting carried away with what’s presently potential or could possibly be potential.” As a substitute, it is important “to be affected person with the method and construct {our capability} over time and in alignment with our strategic targets.”

I do not find out about you, however I feel these are very sensible phrases to finish this text on, certainly.