Episode 1: How Brands Are Using Data to Create Recovery Strategies to Survive the COVID-19 Crisis

Tracy Henderson:
Welcome to the first installment of the new webinars series Revenue Stream With RMS. I’m Tracy Henderson. I’m the founder of Center Reach Communications and I’m here with Revenue Management Solutions CEO John Oakes. Most in the industry know John, but I’m going to take just a minute to brag about him. He leads RMS’s team across five global offices. He’s also deeply involved in the day-to-day analysis and insights that are helping more than 100,000 restaurants around the world deal with this seismic shift that we’re seeing in the industry. He’s also one of the brains behind RMS’s newest SaaS solution called metiRi which helps franchise brands gain more financial transparency, and he’s just a student of the industry. John reads economic data like most people watch cable news, so he’s the perfect person to help us launch this new webinar series. Thanks for kicking it off with us, John.

John Oakes:
I’m glad to be here, Tracy. Since this pandemic started, we’ve constantly been looking for ways to help our clients and provide additional insights as we go through this together.

Tracy Henderson:
Yeah, it’s an understatement to say 2020 has been a year like no other. But how are you seeing some of your brands manage through the crisis and maybe even thrive?

John Oakes:
We’ve seen that data is important during this process. So when you have a shock to the system like a pandemic that’s significantly reduced sales, there’s a lot of actions that have to be taken to mitigate that impact. One thing we’ve seen is brands sometimes struggle to have a clear picture of the overall financial health of their system when they’re franchised. Secondly, they also don’t have clarity into the individual health of each franchisee in a lot of these situations.

Tracy Henderson:
Yeah. So why is that important right now?

John Oakes:
We’ve found with the franchisor and franchisee, there’s really a symbiotic relationship. There’s a lot of ways they help each other and work together. Having an understanding of exactly where the financial health is of the system in each franchisee allows them to work together to plan what steps are necessary to get through this pandemic. That might be through some sort of relief the franchisor could provide, additional sales-building efforts the franchisee can provide. But understanding where everyone stands and making sure they’re working from the same spot requires data.

Tracy Henderson:
Yeah. So it sounds like it gets everyone on the same page.

John Oakes:
Absolutely.

Tracy Henderson:
How does it do that?

John Oakes:
So metiRi collects and aggregates franchisee financial information across all the franchisees in the system. What this does is allow both the franchisor and the franchisee to have a really clear picture of financial performance across a largely disparate group of franchisees. So there’s benefits here for the franchisor who can use this data to understand what actions need to be taken, and there’s also benefits for the franchisee who can compare themselves to peer groups and look for opportunities to improve their business.

Tracy Henderson:
Yeah. I can see how it would benefit both sides of the equation. Is it easy for franchisees to enter data into the system, for instance, and are they pretty willing to offer up that data?

John Oakes:
It’s definitely easy for them to enter data into the system. We can always set up a demo and show how straightforward that process is. I think it’s a great question in terms of, are they willing to share that data? So we’ve seen some reluctance in the past to share that data, but as they understand the benefits for them and the franchisor, that understanding definitely starts to change. There are really clear benefits for both of them to share this information and understand what actions need to be taken.

Tracy Henderson:
So, John, I’ll say metiRi is relatively new, but how many restaurants are already using it?

John Oakes:
Yes. We’ve seen tremendous interest in this solution. We only launched it one year ago and we already have it in over 35,000 locations. What we’ve seen is the information was important to decision making before the pandemic, but even during the pandemic and going into a recovery period, it’s been extremely important to plan those strategies.

Tracy Henderson:
Yeah. So that’s interesting. Can you give us an example of how this played out during the heat of the pandemic?

John Oakes:
Yeah, definitely. So you probably saw during this pandemic and still going on now, lots of franchisors and franchisees had to work together to understand what was required. This might’ve been some sort of relief from the franchisor to the franchisee or other way of working together to see what was necessary. What we saw with some of the brands we work with is an immediate reliance on this data to understand what support was necessary. So without this, you’re largely guessing. You’re trying to understand which franchisees need support and what that support looks like, the level and the depth and the magnitude of that. Whereas when you have this data, it’s not guessing. It’s a much more strategic discussion on what options are available when you have all the facts in front of you.

Tracy Henderson:
Yeah. It sounds like metiRi really prepared your clients well. Unfortunately, 2021 is going to be a little bit more of a shift. Is there still time for brands to get set up on metiRi?

John Oakes:
There is still time. What I would recommend is if somebody is interested, to schedule a demo with us and we can quickly walk through what that process looks like and how straightforward it is.

Tracy Henderson:
Great. And we will have a screen with contact information at the end of the webinar. John, thanks so much for your time today.

John Oakes:
Thanks for moderating today, Tracy. We have a series of webinars in the works, all based on the questions we receive from our clients.

Tracy Henderson:
That’s great, John. And people can find out about the next installment in the webinar series by either going to revenuemanage.com and signing up for the email newsletter or by following Revenue Management Solutions on LinkedIn or Twitter. Thank you for joining us today.