Are you looking to grow through Mergers and Acquisitions in 2022? You’ll need more than just software if you want to grow your multi-unit business.

The franchise industry is no longer ruled by the small business entrepreneur. Private equity groups, investment firms, and large enterprises are taking over the multi-unit platform. While the COVID pandemic forced many struggling businesses to close their doors, it opened the opportunity for other companies to grow through mergers and acquisitions, mostly in the restaurant space. However, M&A can be complex, with so many moving pieces happening at once. Business leaders who have perfected operating a multi-unit company know that the best way to manage operations while attempting to grow is to leave it to the experts.  

There was a time when outsourcing was thought to be an expensive commodity among larger corporations. Today, outsourcing is the key to efficiently and optimally operating a business. Leaders who have leveraged outsourced services are leaps and bounds ahead of their peers who are managing operations with software and manual labor. Take a look at these 3 reasons why you need more than software to achieve strategic goals and scale your business.

Is you Finance team set up to drive business growth?  Read our blog: Streamline Your Business Processes for Ultimate Productivity and Profitability.

1. Software Requires Users

There are so many software and SaaS solutions with high-end capabilities, and they try to position themselves for multi-unit enterprise level use. But the reality is, software can’t do it all, and it still requires the staff to operate. Here’s why that’s a problem.

Scaling your business means more inventory, more labor, more vendors to manage, and more invoices just to name a few things. This means you’ll need additional staff to handle the workload. That’s more time spent hiring and managing new staff. That staff will have to be trained on your software.

If your goal is scale quickly, you’ll need more than just efficient software. Hiring and managing a larger team requires a large amount of time and resources, hindering your ability to focus on the next strategic move. With outsourcing, that team is already in place and ready to take on the larger workload immediately or soon after you close on a merger or acquisition, allowing you to stay agile and proactive.

2. Software Doesn’t Integrate Well Across A Multi-Unit Business

You may have a robust software or SaaS provider that automates certain processes or manages back-office, tedious tasks for you. That’s great, but what happens when that software doesn’t integrate with other systems? What about the disparate systems you acquire during an acquisition? How does having a robust accounting or management software help streamline those different systems?

With outsourcing, your provider has the ability to integrate and streamline systems across your operations including point-of-sale, payroll, back-of-house, and 3^rd party. This would be a large undertaking and cost for a company to do in-house. Outsourcing simplifies this process and makes it more economical to achieve.

3. Software Doesn’t Have Experience

While the software you purchase may have been used for years by companies in the industry, the expertise of an outsourcing provider is still unmatched. Many multi-unit leaders have experience in real-estate, but not much experience running or operating a restaurant. On the flip side, some leaders run great restaurants, but don’t have the experience operating on a larger, multi-unit scale.

An outsourcing provider not only has the years of experience behind them, they can connect you with other companies within your industry so you can learn from peers and see what others are doing. The insight that an outsourcing provider offers is invaluable

Bottom Line

You don’t need an outsourcing provider to grow your business, you can certainly do it on your own. However, if you want to scale quickly, outsourcing your operations is the easiest and quickest way to accomplish your goal. Trying to manage operations 100% on your own with a core team is doable, but it will slow your growth and make scaling much harder to do.

With more and more private equity groups, investors, and larger enterprises on the playing field, we will begin to see more companies moving to an outsourced model. Outsourcing has grown in popularity over the past 5 years, and could soon be the industry standard for companies looking to grow quickly.