Franchisor
Your Business
Your brand has become sufficiently associated with car rental that other business will pay for the privilege of putting your logo above their rental offices.
Not only does The Brand help to provide reservations for your franchisees, but your successful business operating model provides a repeatable formula that will allow those same franchisees to mimic your success.
- Competition from businesses who want to use The Brand
- Successful, ambitious and growing franchisees operating in a consistent manner that supports The Brand
- Satisfied, repeat customers who delight in reserving rentals with any business that displays Your Brand
In return for initial and recurring franchise fees, your franchisees / licensees hope for continuing support, integration and the knowledge / practical skills that allow them to be as successful as you have been.
This places a significant burden of responsibility upon the franchisor but among the benefits is a continually strengthening brand. That burden can be lightened, to a great degree, through leveraging technology to support The Brand and the business operating system. Get it right and you start a virtuous cycle (right).
The relationship between Brand and Technology is a simple one. Consistency and scalability are the non-negotiable considerations for the corporate body considering (or engaged in) franchising.
National and international franchisors who have not deployed common systems throughout their network have, at one time or another, felt:
- Constrained in their ability to provide consistent service that supports The Brand
- Frustrated that breaks in the natural flow of data from Rates to Reservation to RA to Report cause manual work and its associated errors, duplication and cost
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Restricted in their ability to expand into new territories due to:
- Multi-currency limitations
- Multi-lingual system capability
How Thermeon can support your franchise business
cars+ reduces costs across your franchise network
Reduce deployment costs
- With cars+ in use in more than 50 countries, there are few local differences that we have not overcome in the past.
- Well proven and often repeated training and data migration methods have allowed us to support numerous national rollouts year after year.
Reduce running costs
Variable cost / SaaS pricing model
- Eliminate hardware costs from the IT budget.
- No server deployments required.
- Thermeon provides backs up / Disaster Recovery facilities consistent with enterprise-level expectations.
- The monthly cost of providing cars+ service varies with the rhythm of your (and your franchisees) seasonal business.
Training and Support
With both conducted remotely, the human resource cost of delivery is significantly reduced while still providing a level of service that makes it FEEL like Thermeon is a part of your business
Eliminate duplication in IT spend
- With all arms of the business operating from a single system, interface costs, development, process changes, etc are performed on a once-only basis.
- Associated costs are potentially spread over a wider base and gain greater re-use.
Reduce Operational Costs
Cohesive continuity of data at all stages from Rate to Res to RA to Report when processed without manual intervention eliminates manual processing and reduces likelihood of error (and the associated re-work). The most obvious quick wins are ALWAYS:
- Reservation conversion to RA Open
- Reporting franchise fee-related activity to franchisor by franchisee
- In EVERY franchisor / franchisee deployment of cars+, there are ALWAYS dozens more data processing tasks eliminated.
Fast counter processing (using our Character Interface at the busiest locations) reduces the time taken to serve a customer. That saved time can be turned into “selling opportunity time” or staff reduction benefit.
cars+ helps maximise revenue opportunities across the Brand’s network
Deploy webRES to support:
- The presentation of your Brand on, what should be, your #1 booking channel
- Multi-lingual, multi currency presentation of all locations within your network
- Presentation of rates controlled by franchisee or franchisor. Changes to rates made in cars+ are INSTANTLY reflected on webRES.
- Yield managed and capacity controlled rates
- Pre-Paid, Pay on Arrival or Part Paid forms of payment
Integrate with Brokers through webXML to:
- Expose your and your franchise rates to a wider online audience
- Support corporately negotiated deals, backed by the reassurance that those deals can be supported by your entire network, unconstrained by any interface constraints.
cars+ helps you build The Brand
Improve consistency between Franchisor and Franchisees
For a brand operating in many countries, common systems are the foundation for consistency. Brand values translate into Policies - all governed by the franchisor. However, the supporting procedures and operating practices are often implemented in an inconsistent manner UNLESS the business rules are applied consistently. This is largely a systems function (or certainly can be controlled by systems). Lack of control at "operating practice" level CAN ultimately affect The Brand.
Get this right and a number of other benefits naturally follow:
- Best practice is quickly and consistently rolled out
- Share development & change management costs while reducing time to market with initiatives
- Enhanced franchisor audit capability
- Inter-country / region rentals possible
- Cross-country / region reporting capability
Consistent Information
"Apples for Apples" reporting is only truly achievable when data is gathered according to the same business rules and with data "classified" in the same way. Once a franchisor knows that the reservations that is sends to a franchisee are processed:
- in a consistent manner
- with revenue items all being assigned to consistent revenue “buckets” (often GL codes)
Then the franchisor can be sure that the information based upon the received data is more likely to be correct.
Good information facilitates better decision making.
- Automating the flow of data helps ensure that decision making time is reduced.
- In turn, this helps gain competitive advantage in the domains of pricing, revenue forecasting and franchisee performance.
- "Apples for apples" reporting also allows more confident comparison of franchisee vs franchisee: a useful contribution to license renewal decisions.
Strengthen your franchise offering to potential (and existing) franchisees
A Brand, supported by:
- Clear policies,
- An easy to follow operating model
- All supported by reliable systems
...are the foundations for an attractive offering to franchisees.
A new (or existing) franchisee, often looks towards the franchisor for leadership in IT matters. Confidently being able to offer a fully integrated system that serves, not just the needs of the franchisor but, the needs of the franchisee (in running their local business) adds a tangible benefit to your offering.
An independent supplier of your “system” also provides both franchisor and franchisee an "escape route" should the licence be terminated. A separation can be made without the added complication of the franchisee being left with now systems to support their future business (should they intend to remain in the car rental market).
Our experience supporting businesses like yours
Thermeon has decades of experience of supporting the worlds biggest brands and their franchise networks. You will recognise the brands we work with: Hertz, Avis, Dollar, Thrifty, Firefly, Budget. All our staff are ex-rental operators with experience ranging from local operations to multi-national corporations. Allowing Thermeon to support your business (and that of your franchisees) gives you access to this experience.
Whether you come to us directly or under a franchisor-agreed contract with Thermeon, we have pricing models that reflect your business' volume. Variable cost pricing models keep our costs in line with the volume and rhythm of your business. Consequently, our staff have a direct interest in your success.
