Synergee: Creating Synergy between Franchisers and Franchisees

With the advent of GPS, navigating through an unknown territory has now become significantly convenient. All one needs to do is open their GPS map, enter the starting point of their journey, followed by their destination. Then as soon as they choose their preferred mode of transport, voila! The GPS map shows the shortest route to reach the destination. Moreover, if there is any interruption in the initial route, the GPS immediately re-routes the user to the next shortest path and helps them reach the destination.

Interestingly, franchisers can also replicate this approach to navigate uncharted territory as they try to reach the proverbial peak of success in the highly competitive business landscape. According to Laurent Dubernais—a maven in franchise management—first, a franchiser or retailer must know their current footing by quantifying their KPIs. The second step is to set a goal or destination. And the third or final step is—just like choosing a mode of transport—determining how these entities wish to reach that goal. This involves laying out a robust roadmap and financial planning. However, these three steps are not easy to integrate into an organizational culture, and it is not uncommon for these companies to encounter an unexpected obstacle along the way.

And that's precisely where Synergee, a management support system for retailers and franchisees, helps customers re-optimize their business goals. The company offers franchise and real-estate management software to help franchisers and real-estate firms re-calculate their business plan and continue moving towards the peak of success without an interruption.
Synergee works as an ERP for franchisers and manages their end-to-end life cycle from network expansion to day-to-day operations. This SaaS platform has 13 modules, such as business planning, audit technique, maintenance, reporting, credit management and more, involving and collaborating with all stakeholders to increase each franchisee’s profitability. Synergee’s royalty management feature calculates due royalties based on franchise contracts and revenue. It also generates invoices and performs ledger entry bringing transparency to the entire process. The solution lowers the risk of failure by managing the P&L statement by building a budget, ensuring it is followed month after month, forecasting the budget, and managing cash with cashflow projection. Furthermore, Synergee also offers dashboards and KPIs with its management reporting to analyze franchisee performance through benchmarking. The solution also organises regional manager visits and field audits and produces visit reports.

True to its name, Synergee connects all the departments at the franchiser level, such as legal, finance, operation and procurement, allowing them to work in ‘synergy’. On the franchisee level, the solution tethers all outlets as well as their suppliers, bankers, CPA, and technical partners.

Recently one of the biggest hardware stock retailers with 217 outlets, integrated the Synergee platform for effective monthly and yearly budgeting. Once the solution was implemented, all the outlets were able to distinctly see the financial performance of the network and each point of sale. The solution analysed actual budget variances and cash flow forecasts. As a result, all the franchisees were able to create better budgets, and with a calculated scoring, the franchiser reduced the risk of not getting paid.

Such success stories are a testament to Synergee’s remarkable solutions. Even in the trying times of the COVID-19 pandemic, Synergee has facilitated its clients with sale insights through a day-to-day product mix analysis to understand the change in customer habits and establishing benchmarks between all franchisees.

Steering ahead, Synergee is all set to expand its footprint in other parts of Europe. The company plans to add multiple languages, multi-currency support and diverse accounting standards to the solution. As Synergee continues to guide franchisers towards getting the maximum value from their franchises, Dubernais highlights its ability to handle everything from a single solution. “Our current focus is to further strengthen our operations in Europe before expanding overseas,” he concludes.