Building Your Franchise Tech Stack: Essential Technology for Success

When you become a Franchisee, one of the things you are obligated to do is invest in diverse technologies mandated by the Franchisor. But aside from those requirements, as a Franchise Owner, you also need to invest in other platforms that will help you work more efficiently.

What does this Franchise Tech Stack look like? What tech investments are necessary to achieve better results? What factors should you consider when evaluating the available options in the market?

In this blog post, we explore these questions with insights from Nadeem Bajwa, the largest Papa Johns Franchisee in North America and one of the Top 5 globally, who shares his perspective on leveraging technology for business growth.

Let’s dig in!

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Nadeem Bajwa, a Tech-Focused Franchisee

We invited Nadeem to our Franchise Wisdom podcast to discuss this topic not only because he has clearly leveraged technology to scale his business and improve its operations. He took it even further by developing the technology to meet his own needs rather than seeking third-party solutions, which later became companies within his corporation, Bajco Group.

This is the second time we have Nadeem as a guest on our podcast. The first time, he shared his inspiring Franchisee journey, immigrating from Pakistan to the US and now owning over 275 Papa Johns units, as well as his best tips for building a great franchise team.

On this occasion, the conversation focused on technology as an asset to build a multi-unit franchise enterprise, and the Franchise Tech Stack that Franchisees must consider to be more efficient and facilitate business growth.

But why is this important to Franchisees?

“What I learned very early on in my journey, probably around restaurant number 2, is that in order to scale, you have to be more efficient and you need to use technology to make your work easier. It all feels doable when you have one or two units, but as you start growing, you need additional tools to run things more efficiently,” Nadeem explained.

“As a businessman, especially when you're an owner-operator, it is extremely important to keep the focus on the main thing: making the right product and serving your customers well. But when you are not managing all the tasks with good technology, it pulls you away from the main purpose of your job and from your role as a Franchise Owner.”

So, what technology investments should you consider not only to improve operational efficiency but also to focus on leadership rather than back-of-house tasks and achieve successful growth?

The Franchisor Mandated Technology

The majority of Franchisors require their Franchisees to use specific technology from day 1. These platforms are necessary for them to be able to duplicate the brand; that’s why they are obligated to use and operate them. The costs of these platforms are typically disclosed in your FDD.

“As a Franchisee, you're obligated to report certain things and share certain aspects of your business because Franchisors want to have some level of control. And those platforms are normally built into their needs,” Nadeem considered.

I would also add that a key reason this happens is for Franchisors to ensure consistent execution across the brand.

Depending on the size of the franchise organization and in some cases the industry, these mandated technologies include:

• POS System
• Royalty Reporting & Payment Portal
• Weekly Sales Reporting System
• Brand LMS / Training System (onboarding & certification)
• Brand Intranet (SOPs, manuals, marketing assets)
• Franchisor Brand Performance Portal (sales, rankings, benchmarks)
• Online Ordering Platform
• Brand Mobile App & Digital Ordering
• Kiosk / Self-Order System
• Communication App / Intranet Portal
• Approved Supplier Ordering System

“The POS system is a perfect example of what most Franchisors mandate. Basically, anything that your Franchisor sort of touches and oversees has a mandatory technology platform behind. The majority of the good Franchisors do that.”

The Other Side of the Franchise Tech Stack

Investing in technology for your franchise isn't limited to the platforms that the Franchisor requires you to use. As a Franchisee, you should also invest in solutions that make it easier for your team to run your business day to day.

These solutions must cover not only the back-office or administrative tasks of your franchise units. Depending on your industry, sales channels, and your growth phase, you should also include people management and other HR functions, your finances, your reporting systems, and equipment maintenance and repairs.

Basically, you need to invest in all the platforms and technology that will help you manage the business side of the franchise. 

Want to learn more? Download your Free AFA’s Franchise Tech Stack, a reference tool for the platforms that will help you improve your operations at every stage of growth and across business areas.

Keep in mind that while the Franchisor can offer recommendations on which providers to use, they cannot mandate who to choose.

4 Considerations for your Franchise Tech Stack

1. Your Business Stage

The Franchise Tech Stack should grow as your business scales. For example, on the “People” aspect, single-unit Franchisees may go with a basic scheduling software, while Multi-Unit Franchisees require additional technology, such as District Manager visit tracking & accountability tool, or even a people analytics platform, depending on how many units they have.

On the “Reporting” side, those with one unit can operate with manual spreadsheet tracking and the franchisor dashboard; however, when you are big enough to have at least one District Manager, you also need a KPI scorecard per unit and an automated weekly P&L reporting. When you operate more than 50 units, you should also use an enterprise BI with predictive analytics and automated board-level reporting.

The same evolution happens in the other areas of your business management.

Discover what the Franchise Tech Stack should look like on each growth stage and business area. Download the AFA’s Franchise Tech Stack for free!

“But it is not only about technology; it is a mindset also”, Nadeem warned. “When you're running your first restaurants, you control and manage everything. But when you get District Managers, you have to transition from managing the restaurant to managing the managers, and your mindset has to change. That's why you want to be extra careful of how fast you grow. Technology has to be there, but you also have to be there mentally.”

 2. Real-time Data Visibility

Another thing to consider in your tech investment is to prefer solutions that provide real-time data, which Nadeem pointed out is “the most critical item” for Multi-Unit Franchisees. “You cannot be in your units every day; you're in multiple places. And there's nothing better than having that real-time data to oversee what’s happening across your organization”.

As an example, he mentioned how the Papa Johns dashboard updates the data every few minutes and allows him to monitor his business as a whole or individually, anytime he wants. “I own almost 300 restaurants in 12 states, and I can look up any individual store at any time. And if for some reason a store is not open, I would automatically get a notification.”

Your non-mandatory technology should also provide visibility into the most important KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for your business and your service, and you should review them on a daily basis.

“John Schnatter, Papa Johns founder and one of my mentors, always used to say that what gets measured gets done. If you don't measure your performance, you can’t get better. You can feel good or bad about it, but by looking at your KPIs every day, you can make improvements and find opportunities.

And it is very critical to have your P&Ls timely at the end of the month. That way, whatever you need to address, you don't wait to act on it. Watching your performance daily is extremely critical for the long-term health of the business.”

As for his own KPIs, Nadeem defines the metrics based on what has impacted or influenced his business over the past year, and monitors them on a daily basis. Among them: labor cost, cost of goods, “door time”, and customer satisfaction scores.

Then, he and his leadership team look at those a little bit more in depth in his weekly meetings. And, of course, they do their monthly financials to know where they are and where they need to be.

3. All-in-One is Better

He also advised Franchisees to look for a partner that offers different solutions on the same platform, rather than adopting separate technology that only handles specific tasks and costs per store & per month. This will not only save you money but also time, since you only have to monitor that single solution instead of working with multiple ones every day.

“Some things are cute and complicated. And sometimes when you're tech-savvy, they are fun to work with. But I would say that simplicity is the best policy when selecting technology. Also, it should be fun to use and not be a burden on your team and on yourself.”

4. Integration

Nadeem also reminded Franchise Owners not to forget the integration aspect of third-party technology. “This becomes a huge part when you have a third party involved as aggregators, whether it's in delivery or in pickup business, and if it's integrated with the POS system, that makes things very efficient and easy.”

Necessity is the Mother of Innovation

Around 20 years ago, when Nadeem and his partners had five stores, they realized that certain aspects of the business were costing them a lot of money, such as accounting. So, being the visionary he is, he decided to create a separate accounting firm to meet the accounting needs of his franchise business.

Nowadays, BE Solutions serves not only Nadeem’s franchise business but also nearly 2,000 locations for 13 different external operators. It also offers financial and payroll services.

The second separate company was born because of COVID. The labor market in the US was tight, and Papa John's was suggesting using a couple of big players in call center services. However, the cost did not make sense to Nadeem. Given the needs of his many units and his roots in Pakistan, he decided to found his own call center, T-Sourcing.

“It would be much more economical than going outside. Papa Johns let me try and experiment, even though we had no technology or experience before. But six months in, the brand reviewed it, and we were blessed to become a Papa Johns-approved vendor. Our solution cut prices by 30 to 40% and is delivering excellent KPIs,” Nadeem affirmed.

This call center is one of the few in this industry that serves customers with both human and AI agents, and it is currently testing AI order-taking in its stores. It also serves external franchise clients.

“My nature is to look for problems and solve them, and as we grew with Papa Johns, we began exploring ways to run the business more efficiently. There was never any intention to provide these services to other businesses; we created them to resolve our own issues. When we resolved them, we saw that a whole business had been born, so we thought, why not share them with others to help them too?”

Today, Bajco Group has four other business divisions that serve clients from different industries. Bajco Tech, focused on technology solutions, handles everything from backend architecture and DevOps to UI design, cloud solutions, and more. Its newest development (still in process): a platform called Meal Dynamics that will bring real-time data and streamline non-mandatory tasks.

Nadeem was able to scale his franchise business and turn it into an empire, meaning a very large multi-unit franchise enterprise. Because he has leaders running his business for him, he can focus on these other verticals and develop new solutions without losing track of his KPIs and growth.

It takes time to get there. But also, the right technology investment and the correct mindset.

Download your AFA's Tech Stack to discover the technology that will help you scale as far as your dreams take you!

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