Ever dream that your franchise could run itself?
In a world of rising costs, labor shortages, operational complexity, and owner burnout, franchisors need help with the heavy lifting.
That’s why 63% of franchise executives plan to invest in tech that drives revenue and cuts costs. And over a quarter are turning to automation and AI to make it happen.
Because efficiency isn’t just about saving time. It’s scaling without chaos, maintaining brand control and enabling your teams to focus on activities that actually drive growth.
Today, we’ll explore how automation can build speed, consistency, and control into your franchise. Even when skilled labor is in short supply.
Empowerment to your people: the benefits of franchise automation
Automation isn’t about replacing people, it’s about removing friction.
If you want to scale, opening new locations is only part of the equation. You need systems that keep every site running smoothly, compliantly, and consistently. Ideally without constant hand-holding from head office.
Here’s what automation brings to your franchise:
- Time savings. Automating routine tasks like onboarding forms or marketing approvals can save hundreds of admin hours across your network. Giving both you and your franchisees more time to focus on strategic growth and customer service.
- Fewer human errors. Manual processes mean mistakes: missed orders, scheduling conflicts, incomplete audits. Automation repeats processes with precision, no matter how complex - reducing risk and keeping operations on track.
- Improved productivity. Don’t let your franchisees get buried in bureaucracy. Automated workflows streamline everything from inventory requests to holiday approvals, making your teams more efficient.
- Higher employee engagement rates. No one likes mindless admin. By eliminating repetitive tasks, automation gives your staff more time for meaningful work. Boosting morale and improving retention, especially in high-turnover roles.
- Consistent execution across locations. Automation reinforces brand standards, policies, and processes consistently across your entire network. This is how you build trust and protect your brand as you scale.
- Better compliance and audit readiness. Need proof of a health and safety check? Or a clear trail of policy acknowledgements? Automation logs every action, making it easy to track compliance, flag issues, and prepare for audits.
- Faster response times. When something goes wrong, like a missed order or a customer complaint, speed is vital. Automation can trigger alerts, assign tasks, and escalate to relevant departments. This means faster follow-up, better accountability, and fewer issues slipping through the cracks.
In short: automation can help streamline operations across your entire network. But what exactly should you automate?
8 Franchise Automation Use Cases
Automation benefits your franchise most when it targets processes that slow you down. The repetitive, error-prone, and time-sensitive tasks that eat into your day and distract you from what really matters.
Here are 8 automation use cases that you can implement to improve efficiency, reduce admin, and protect your brand as you grow.
1. Marketing Material Requests
Too often, franchise marketing support can feel like a game of tennis. Except instead of a ball, it’s constant emails going back and forth.
When franchisees need updated menus or service sheets, social media graphics, or other campaign assets, delays and confusion slow everything down. Or worse, lead to them using off-brand materials and messaging in desperation.
Automation streamlines the entire process. Franchisees can submit a request via a standardized form. The system then automatically routes it to the right department, assigns a deadline, and tracks status updates.
All without sending a single email or chasing approvals.
The result? A consistent brand, less admin and faster local campaign rollouts. All without compromising on quality, consistency, or compliance.
2. Inventory Management and Order Processing
Inventory issues can sink a franchise location fast. Whether it’s stock running out unexpectedly, placing orders too late, or inconsistent processes across sites, poor inventory management creates waste, delays, and customer dissatisfaction.
Too many franchises still rely on manual spreadsheets, phone calls, or ad-hoc ordering systems that increase the risk of errors. Automation changes that.
Standardizing inventory processes lets franchisees keep track of their stock levels. You can route orders to approved suppliers, flag unusual sales patterns, and send alerts when inventory is low. All of which helps you stay ahead of demand.
It also builds a clear, auditable trail that lets you easily track shipments to franchisees.
This leads to a smoother, faster, and more reliable supply chain across your network. Giving you less downtime, better customer service, and increased visibility into daily franchise operations.
3. Customer Complaints and Support Tickets
When a customer has a bad experience, the speed and consistency of your responses can make or break your reputation - not just locally, but across your entire brand.
Too often, complaints get lost in inboxes or bounced between franchise teams. That’s a problem. Because a single poor response - or worse, no response at all - can go viral faster than a five-star review.
Automation brings structure and accountability to your complaint and support processes. Especially when combined with an integrated customer support extranet.
Set up a workflow that assigns tasks, enforces deadlines based on your SLAs, and escalates unresolved issues to the right people. Be sure to also track resolution times, ensuring that all customers get a proper response in a timely manner.
All of which leads to more efficient, consistent support that protects your brand and provides a great customer experience.
4. Automated Staff Scheduling and Holidays
Staff scheduling is one of the most time-consuming admin tasks for franchisees. And one that can easily cause chaos.
Short notice requests and forgotten holiday approvals create last-minute gaps that affect both customer service and team morale. Handled manually, it’s a headache. And if you get it wrong, it can lead to a staffing crisis.
Enable franchisees to use digital forms to log availability, request time off, and view approved schedules via an automated workflow. Requests are sent to the right manager, conflicts flagged in real time, and tasks reassigned to prevent missed deadlines.
This reduces scheduling errors, and the amount of time spent juggling rotas and chasing confirmations.
5. Event or class scheduling
For fitness, education, or wellness franchises, class scheduling is key to effective daily operations. Managing this manually, especially with multiple locations and/or instructors is a recipe for disaster. Leading to double-bookings, no-shows, and frustrated customers.
You can simplify and standardize this with automated events management.
Franchisees can create an events calendar in a shared system. Customers book online, receive instant confirmations, and get automated reminders - reducing drop-offs and last-minute cancellations.
Behind the scenes, your workflow can assign instructors, check room availability, and enforce capacity limits. No more spreadsheets, message threads, or last-minute confusion.
It ensures a faster, more accurate experience for both customers and franchise staff.
6. Compliance Procedures and Evidence Collection
Ensuring compliance is non-negotiable in franchising. Whether it’s health and safety, operational standards or industry regulations.
Relying on manual log procedures and evidence submission is risky and hard to audit. When you’re enforcing compliance across hundreds of locations, this can quickly turn into a logistical nightmare.
Automation brings structure, accountability, and visibility to your compliance processes.
The right software lets franchisees complete digital checklists, upload evidence (like photos or signed PDFs), and follow step-by-step e-forms that guide them through procedures. Automated workflows ensure nothing gets missed, sending reminders for upcoming deadlines and escalating overdue tasks to the right people.
A system like this enables you to store data securely in a central location, with full audit trails and reporting dashboards that provide instant oversight of every franchisee.
7. Field Audits
Maintaining quality standards across your franchise is essential. But relying on fully manual field audits is time-consuming, inconsistent, and hard to follow up on.
Whether it’s health and safety checks, risk assessments, or operational spot checks, using spreadsheets or pen-and-paper checklists creates delays. Making it easy to miss critical issues.
That’s why automating the reporting and follow-up process matters. It ensures issues are flagged, tracked, and resolved in a timely manner.
Auditors can complete digital checklists on-site using mobile-friendly e-forms. These can include dropdowns, comments boxes, and evidence uploads (like a photo of a failed inspection point).
Once they submit the audit, workflows automatically trigger follow-up actions, notify relevant teams and track remediation progress.
Everything is logged, timestamped, and stored in a central location, giving head office complete visibility of audit outcomes and resolutions.
8. Logging Breach Notices and Triggering Remediation Workflows
Even with the best systems and processes in place, things can still go wrong. Franchisees can fail to submit financial reports, not follow brand standards or breach compliance requirements.
The issue isn’t just about identifying these problems. It’s making sure that once they’re found they’re properly documented, escalated, and resolved. With the right automation platform, you can make these remediation workflows structured and trackable.
If someone finds a problem, ensure that they can log it quickly. This should trigger a remediation workflow that assigns tasks, sets deadlines and escalates the issue to the appropriate teams.
Each step is then recorded with timestamps and evidence, creating a clear audit trail and ensuring no issue goes unresolved.
This is a scalable way to enforce accountability, project brand integrity, and respond to operational breakdowns before they spread.
Finding the Right BPA Software for Your Franchise
The right franchise automation platform should empower your franchisees, support head office, and make it easy to automate vital processes. All without needing technical expertise or expensive custom development.
Here are five features you should look for when choosing a platform:
1. No-Code Workflow Builder
You shouldn’t need a developer to automate routine processes. A no-code interface lets teams create and update workflows - from marketing approvals to compliance checks - without them needing to write a single line of code.
2. Granular User Permissions
To streamline operations, you need to have full control over every layer of your network. From head office, to regional managers, franchisees, and staff. Find an automation platform that lets you set clear permissions so people have easy access to their tasks, forms and data.
3. SLA Tracking and Automated Escalations
As we’ve discussed, speed matters. Especially when it comes to complaints, compliance, or customer service. Your BPA tool should let you set deadlines, track service-level agreements (SLAs), and automatically escalate tasks that aren’t completed on time.
4. Centralized Reporting and Dashboards
Visibility is key, no matter whether you’re managing dozens or hundreds of franchise locations. Choose a platform that offers clear reporting tools so you can track task completion, bottlenecks, and performance across your network.
5. Integrated E-Forms with File Uploads
From audit photos to signed PDFs, franchises generate a lot of documentation. Any automation platform you choose should support dynamic e-forms that allow evidence collection, digital signatures, and attachments that make them perfect for audits, onboarding, and franchisee support.
Build a Smarter, More Scalable Franchise
Automation doesn’t just help you navigate current labor shortages - it builds a stronger operational foundation for the future.
By automating your most time-consuming, error-prone, and inconsistent processes, you can improve the speed, consistency, and quality of your entire franchise network. That means happier customers, less admin for your teams, and more time to focus on growth.
Claromentis helps franchisors with built-in automation tools, customizable workflows, digital checklists, e-forms, and centralized reporting. All of this is backed up by an easy-to-use platform that also includes a powerful franchise intranet and LMS to boost communication, collaboration and training across head office and franchise locations.
Want to see it in action? Book a demo today and find out how Claromentis can help you run a more efficient, compliant, and scalable franchise.
