Green Acres ‘Elevates’ its Game

Media Release

Green Acres ‘Elevates’ its Game

Franchise management system enhances productivity and transparency

Green Acres Franchise Group has implemented a new browser-based software system that tracks and manages all aspects of service delivery from inquiries and quotations to appointments and invoicing. The system, known within the company as ‘Tiger,’ was built by New Zealand software development company, Sandfield, to provide franchisees, managers and support personnel with clear visibility into all aspects of the business, ensuring that quotations are carried out and followed up, contracts assigned, services delivered and guarantees met.

The user-friendly management software was developed out of Sandfield’s own franchise management system, Elevate, which was designed to meet the specific needs of franchised businesses. Sandfield’s software was scaled to fit the Green Acres business group and aligned to meet the needs of the territory based franchising model used by Green Acres.

The software is flexible enough to meet the needs of service businesses as different as car valeting, home and commercial cleaning, and lawn mowing and garden care. Some services, car valet for example, are based on unique appointments, while others, like lawn mowing, are recurring, but weather and season dependent.

Regardless of the job and location the system deployment has increased efficiency throughout Green Acres staff. And because sound service principles have been built into the software, it also improves the level of service to customers, making sure that all requests and instructions are captured, and all work is assigned and performed in a manner consistent with the company’s ethos.

The first point of contact for Tiger is the Green Acres call centre. New client details are immediately captured and logged while at the same time initiating the contact process of assigning the work to the right franchisee. Quotes can be immediately requested and franchisees alerted to the new job by email or text. If an existing customer calls the automated system, pre-logged details will be recognised by the call wizard and will ‘pop-up’ so call centre operators can provide immediate assistance. The software ensures Green Acres captures all customer data and provides absolute transparency of franchisee jobs, quotes and invoicing. The software also enables managers to track the revenue streams of employees, a key function of the system, as it enables guarantees to be accurately monitored.

“Tiger lets me see into every aspect of the Green Acres business,” says Green Acres Chief Executive, Andrew Chisholm. “Every franchisee, every job and every detail is at my fingertips, and because it’s managed on the web, I can log in and monitor the business anytime, anywhere.”

Because Tiger is hosted at Green Acres offices, rather than deployed on distributed PCs, it has been architected to maximise efficiency and mitigate risk. IT administrators can log in remotely to apply changes to the system or database. The system also has redundant disaster recovery back up plans.

“Paramount amongst our requirements was that we have a high availability system and IT support, as well as being able to have our requests met in an acute timeframe. Because vital information is transferred to the appropriate individuals in real time this enables Green Acres to deliver services to customers as promised. That’s good for our customers and good for our reputation. As an outsourced solution Tiger really takes the hassle out of maintaining a complex IT system,” says Chisholm.

With Tiger, it’s not a case of one size fits all. The Tiger framework allows Green Acres IT administrators to easily modify and fine tune user visibility by applying per-person and per-permission access. This means that individual franchisees data remains visible only to them and they are not able to access other franchisee’s data. And set up has been streamlined. When new area managers join the group their personal details can be loaded, their level of access applied and their accounts activated within minutes.

The system build was designed for the upward flow of information. Directors have total visibility and can see exactly what the master franchisees are working on. The master franchisees may view what area managers have planned and so on. The security of Green Acres and its mission critical data has been enhanced by the Tiger software.

Since Tiger went live Green Acres employees have embraced the system. End user feedback has shown the system is simple to use and those who have embraced it find it indispensible in their day to day activities.

The user interface is driven through a control panel view, which allows users to point and click as they would on any home computer. Franchisees with little or no computer experience are able to quickly learn and use to its simple matrices.

“The franchisee’s love the way Tiger reduces the time they spend on administration, because in this business time really is money,” says Andrew. “If Green Acres franchisees can cut down on admin time that gives them more time to grow their businesses by increasing their customer base and improving their bottom line. And that’s something we’re all looking to do in the present economic climate. What’s more, because the system accurately tracks all work, they can tell exactly how well their business is performing at any given moment.”

With Tiger, Green Acres took a ‘whole of company’ approach. The system first went live for the car valet franchises and in less than two months was applied to the lawn mowing portion of the business. By late February 2009 Tiger was completely deployed across the home cleaning, commercial cleaning and carpet and pest control franchises.

“The Tiger platform allows me to track customer data, jobs, invoices, revenue streams and more. It increases our efficiency across the board and with it our business potential. The system has really earned its stripes!”

ENDS

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