5 Benefits of Vendor Consolidation for Franchisors
5 Benefits of Vendor Consolidation for Franchisors
As a franchisor, you know how important vendors are to your business’s success. They supply everything from components for your products, to office supplies, to business services. However, the more vendors you sign a contract with, the more managing your vendors becomes like herding cats.
Fortunately, you can make things easier for your administrative team and for your budget with vendor consolidation. Finding a trusted partner who can take care of multiple needs can help you run a more streamlined and efficient business. However, the benefits of vendor consolidation don’t stop there. Here are five reasons vendor consolidation is a no-brainer for franchisors:
1) Reduced Costs Across the Board
When working with a long list of vendors, business costs can add up. If you consolidate some of your purchasing needs to the same vendor, you may be able to reduce some of these costs. Because you are bringing one vendor more of your business, you may have the opportunity to negotiate better prices for products. Also, you will have fewer costs associated with setting up one vendor in your system versus several vendors.
2) Time Savings
Rather than developing and maintaining a relationship with multiple vendors, your administrative team will have fewer contacts to manage. This leads to time savings that can filter down to your franchisees as well. They will be able to spend less time sorting through vendors and have a better understanding of where to go for materials. In turn, they will be able to focus more on their core business.
3) Better Technology Integration
Working with multiple vendors can mean accessing several different technology platforms every day, each with their own logins and quirks. Having to remember the details of each platform can be challenging, and because these systems are often not built to integrate with each other, your team must manually move data from one platform to the next. If you can identify a partner that offers integrated technology solutions for more than one area of your business, you will have fewer headaches from trying to get unintegrated systems to “talk” to each other.
4) Improved Vendor Relationships
The fewer vendors you work with, the more opportunity there is to build a mutually beneficial, long-lasting relationship with them. A vendor that handles more of your sourcing will be able to better anticipate how to serve your company and support your goals. By working with one vendor for more of your needs, you will be giving that supplier a larger share of revenue, which can translate into cost savings and perks for you.
5) Increased Visibility and Control
A great byproduct of merging vendors is you regain visibility into your supplier relationships, and you have more control over the areas of business these suppliers affect. When you’re wanting to do a deep dive into your spending or check into a potential issue, it is much harder to accomplish your goal with multiple vendors. However, the more consolidated your accounts are, the easier it will be to have a full picture of your vendor relationships.
How Xpressdocs Can Help
Are you in need of expert assistance to consolidate your marketing, direct mail, and brand management needs? Xpressdocs is a trusted partner for many well-known franchise brands because we have a wide breadth of solutions and services that help power franchise success while maintaining competitive pricing. We can help support the local marketing efforts of your franchisees while ensuring brand consistency across locations. Our team of experts can propose a customized solution for your franchise that will help save time and money with Xpressdocs.