After creating scorecards and reviewing the final grades of the three competing RFPs, Radiant/Aloha was the obvious choice. “We went to all the FOCUS departments to determine what we were ideally looking for in a system,” McDougall says. “Through all of our research, taking the scoring formats and totaling them up, we came up with Radiant/Aloha.”

Part of what attracted FOCUS to Radiant/Aloha was the technology provider’s experience in rolling out new systems. Presently Radiant/Aloha has approximately 30,000 machines in operation.

At FOCUS Phelps predicts the upgrade will progress with the installation of at least 15 new systems per month. And McDougall is not anticipating any glitches. “From a POS standpoint, it’s pretty much a simplistic system from the consumer’s point of view.” So simple in fact, Phelps says the upgrade typically requires only one day of training.

And still, FOCUS is doing its part to ensure that employees at the store level and the corporate level receive the training they need in order to make the transition as smooth as possible. “As we’ve kicked off this project, there’s a number of things that we’re doing to make sure that all the FOCUS associates are well-versed in the technology, about how the technology works,” McDougall says. “It’s become an integral part of our training program for new franchise owners.”

Not only is it crucial that employees become comfortable manning the system, says McDougall, they also need to know how to retrieve the information collected and then, once they do, know what to do with the information they’ve been given. The extent of their training, McDougall says, should enable them to decipher product reports.

In short, what the new system offers FOCUS that its previous platform did not is an improved speed of sale and a better way to track inventory. “Take, for instance, Carvel. They sell a lot of cakes,” Phelps says. “With the system, you can track the number of cakes sold and stock up efficiently for the next day or even the next week.” In the end, what Phelps was able to provide FOCUS was an affordable solution for software and hardware that is easy to use, with a system in place to support a growing business. “When smaller companies like Carvel start to expand, they’ll need this kind of infrastructure in place to support their operating needs,” he says.

FOCUS expects the system to provided franchisees with the ability to see how menu items are selling and assess the success or failure dishes, which will, in turn, help store owners “determine how [they’re] able to improve [their] bottom line profitability and examine the information he or she is given” as often as necessary.

So what will something like this cost FOCUS franchisees? According to McDougall, the initial investment could cost anywhere from $6,000 to $8,000. That figure includes a POS unit, back-office computer with internet access, and a dedicated web site for their locations.

Outside of the initial set-up, franchisees are also responsible for a monthly fee of $100 to $200, depending on the level of support he or she elects to get after one year, as well as a software license sub-fee. “The way we set this up with Radiant/Aloha,” McDougall says, “is that someone could opt to determine whether they’ll just go with basic service/help desk support or something more robust.”

“They’re using an enterprising system that’s going to allow their franchisees to do better research on how promotions are working,” Phelps says. “It offers FOCUS Brands a very good insight into the world of each of these restaurants, to see how they’re doing, including the ability to gauge royalties on a daily basis, if they want.”

McDougall grades the joint venture as an overall win-win for both sides of the business, corporate headquarters and franchise partners, saying, “Really, it’s a matter of being able to pull this all together…to show our owners—especially our existing owners—how this will benefit them in terms of how they operate their business.”