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Imagine running a small business that oversees the acquisition and build-out of franchise locations. How would you track the status of each site as it progresses through the steps from basic site selection through lease negotiation to the management of build-outs.
That is what a property management company is Phoenix is doing. Using Distributed Spreadsheet, a team of 8 are overseeing the process of simultaneously bringing up multiple franchise sites for multiple franchise companies and tracking all of it through a large Excel Workbook.
The setup of the workbook started out as a listing of the major milestones for a single, generic site location and build project. As the team worked through the initial tracking process, the worksheet became worksheets and were changed to add greater levels of details through breaking the milestones into smaller and smaller distinct steps. Each individual site is now a separate worksheet in the workbook and each worksheet is assigned to a single site manager. Each Monday, the site managers receive an e-mail containing their worksheets as last submitted. Each site manager is responsible for returning the updated worksheets on Friday. This may mean updating between 3 and 8 worksheets each. Distributed Spreadsheet allows for the executives to view the status of all projects on the following Monday after the worksheets are merged back into the master.
Embedding target dates for specific milestones into the workbook allows for comparisons of target to actual. Actuals that exceed targets are automatically highlighted. Comments from site managers are included thus explanations regarding reasons for slipping dates can be included.
By sending out the worksheets for updating on a weekly basis, progress can be easily tracked as each week’s reports are separate submissions thus avoiding overwriting last week’s submission with this week’s submission. Tracking who has sent in their weekly reports is also easy to track through the Analysis Center.
Providing reports to the franchise corporate office has also been streamlined. By building a summary page that reflects the status of the individual franchise location sheets, monthly reports to the corporate office are facilitated by adding the corporate contact as a “Contributor” for a single distribution. On the first Monday of the month, the additional Contributor is added, the worksheets distributed and the additional Contributor is removed. The $20 for a software license at the franchise corporate office is very inexpensive relative to the time saved.
Thus, this usage model combines traditional distribution and contribution along with a one-way push of the summary page.
I have often been asked if a single workbook was the only option or could a workbook be created for each franchise. The answer is whatever works best. Depending upon the number of franchise operations, the number of site managers and overall organization structure, one model may be better suited than the other. Perhaps a mixture of the 2 models is ideal. The beauty of Excel is that changing the model is very easy to accomplish.
If you have questions about this application of Distributed Spreadsheet, please drop a note to info@distributedspreadsheet.com.
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