Franchisees at hydraulic hose repair business ENZED are in for a technology overhaul, with the industrial giant unveiling a new partnership with management platform Radaro.

The new implementation sees the smartphone-based management tool rolled out by ENZED head office across all 72 Australian franchised service centres. Increased visibility, customer interaction and real-time feedback are all set to deliver improved franchisee conditions, with 80 per cent of network already jumping on-board.

Mark Engel, Australasian franchise business manager for Parker Hannifin, of which ENZED is a subsidiary said the roll-out was a massive boost to the mobile hose repair franchisee network.

“The initial aid of the Radaro roll-out was to give headquarters greater visibility and control over the network,” Engel said.

“Previously we had no real-time visibility of our road fleet and did not have a way of capturing core information. New work order creation was extremely manual and resource-intensive, whereas now we can access historical information and locate our on-road hose doctors at the touch of a button.”

Engel told Inside Franchise Business the process of implementation started with the franchise advisory council.

“With anything new there’s always push back, we had a very loyal franchise base who had been around for a long time – we knew we would have some feedback and in the first instance of integrating it we discussed it with our franchise council – it had sign off from them before implementing it.

“We incentivised it internally for the use and best practice within our service centres and pretty much all internal and external operations in the last six months have revolved around the use of the program.

“Ultimately though, when franchises and internal users alike see that the system works then it validates itself, as the interaction with customers improves for everyone involved.”

What’s in it for ENZED franchisees?

Where the new ENZED technology roll-out will deliver the greatest business boom is through lead delegation and communication. Service centres now have the capability of notifying ENZED customers when a host doctor will reach them, providing a live ETA.

Engel said the new implementation would ultimately reduce stress and minimise downtime and lost productivity, while also offering customers the opportunity to to provide real-time feedback through their mobile device.

“Service centres would have up to 10 or 11 hose doctors on the road but would have very little visibility over their location or availability for the next call-out,” he said.

“Radaro allowed us to revolutionise the visibility of our network and allow our service centres to manage both current and incoming work across their territories. It has brought a customer relationship level that we didn’t have which enables us to engage our customers from the inception of the job.”

“The most important part of being in a franchise is learning from network best practice and ensuring that everybody is partaking,”

ENZED is a New Zealand-based company that entered Australia in 1981, offering 24/7 hydraulic hose repaid through its mobile operators.