“One of the great opportunities in business intelligence is to increase the footprint and make intelligence available to the people who can act on it, not just the (executive) managers,” he said.

Karin Hattingh is the divisional controller for Gloria Jean’s Coffees in Australia which is installing IBM Cognos TM1 to provide enhanced reporting for the business. “One of the aims for the future is to do franchise partner analysis and benchmarking,” according to Hattingh, who hopes to have a system ready by Christmas.

“If they know that other franchisees are returning 18 per cent profit, compared with their 10 per cent,” she said, store managers may be in a position to, for example, tackle their costs of goods. Analysis may show their wastage or salary costs are higher than comparable outlets allowing store managers to make changes to improve performance.

“When you drill down to that level you might find that some of the franchise partners never use casuals for more than 20 hours a week, and if you pay less than $400 a week then you don’t have to make superannuation contributions.” Having more granular store level information would allow franchise partners to more effectively manage their businesses.

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