How do you know your people are following your policies and procedures?
A franchisee running about 300 restaurants across several national brands had written procedures but no reliable way to see whether they were followed. Over more than three years on retainer, we acted as its development team across operations, HR, construction, IT, accounting, and executive reporting.
Developers for a 300-location franchise operator
The situation
The client is a franchisee operating about 300 quick-service restaurants across several national brands. Head office had written policies and procedures for running its locations. It had IT staff to keep its systems running. It did not have developers.
That made some important work hard to get done. Connecting one system to another takes a developer. So does fixing a known problem in how a system is set up. Without one, those jobs waited.
The engagement began with a question about how leadership knew its procedures were being followed in every location. The procedures were written down. The work happened in hundreds of restaurants. Very little connected the two in a way head office could check.
What we did
We worked on a monthly retainer, and our team worked on whatever the client needed most at the time. In practice, we were the company’s developers.
The work reached well beyond the restaurants themselves:
- Restaurant operations. We put checklists into the restaurant management system and connected them to the company’s other operations systems.
- Integrations. We built more than 30 integrations. At least 20 of them connected checklist data to other operations systems.
- HR. We closed gaps in HR compliance.
- New construction and remodels. We built custom tools for the construction staff.
- IT and security. We built cloud infrastructure and alerting systems, and consulted on security.
- Accounting, real-estate acquisition, and executive reporting. We connected data from these areas into reporting leadership could use.
What changed
Checklists gave head office a view from two sides. One came from the employees doing the work. The other came from the managers and auditors checking it. Together they showed where training was needed across the whole company.
Processes that had drifted apart from one market area to another were standardized. With consistent processes and the data to match, the company could relate how its restaurants operated to its hiring and sales results.
The engagement continued for more than three years.
