December 06, 2019
How Software WITH a Service helps franchise networks
Wage compliance is arguably one of the biggest threats to the health of an entire franchise network. The impact of incorrect payment of staff can go well beyond just a single location where it occurs.
Experts in the space, Rob Dryden and Anthony Pascoe of IWS Australia, talk us through how service with software goes about solving this problem.
Software WITH a Service makes all the difference
Explaining the background, Rob recalls, "When we started IWS, call it 10 years ago, we really wanted to be pioneers in this term we'd coined back then called SwaaS - Software with a Service.
Everyone seems to know what SaaS is (Software as a Service), where you pay a subscription for a piece of software and you use it day-in and day-out to run your business.
The difference between SaaS and SwaaS is that SwaaS comes with support
SaaS is a piece of tech that you maybe get a bit of help setting up initially, but then you're left to your own devices.
With SwaaS, you get help configuring it, but you also get ongoing support where you need it. And the reality is every business owner is different. Some pick it up straight away and don't need huge amounts of support, other business owners need lots of support to get true value out of the tech that they have configured."
"Software is only as good as the people who are using it"
"...particularly in the space that we play in when we're dealing with small- to medium-size business owners, and supporting that user on how best you can figure it, and how best to use it is really key for them getting true value from it.
Xero is a good example of a SaaS-based product. It's a bit of technology that you pay a license fee for and then you've got to use it to run your business and to do your work in.
There's lots of competitors out there, who are SaaS-based providers who have built brilliant bits of technology that roll it out and help businesses set it up, but then they're out of their. Business owners are left to their own devices to use it."
“If you look at what IWS does, we roll out the technology that we think is best-in-class, cloud-based tech, we configure it for the customer, we then train them on that tech so they know how to use it and how best to get the most value out of it, and then we deliver our service through it. Rob Dryden, CEO”
Anthony elaborates on the issues at store level for franchise networks. "You'll get situations where your franchisees haven't configured things properly, or they're accidentally misusing the software, or, in rare cases, they might be deliberately overriding the software.
Whereas with the software with a service model, you can sleep at night knowing that everyone's getting paid on a consistent basis across the entire network."
