Godfather’s Pizza, a national pizza franchise headquartered in Omaha, NE, has a simple mission: to deliver exceptional pizza that brings people together. Over the last 50 years, the business has grown to well over 3,000 locations nationwide. Around 2013, Godfather’s Pizza embarked on a digital transformation journey with ActionCard, a web- and mobile-enabled operations platform that helps franchisees and brand owners drive consistent oversight and compliance across multiple locations. Since implementing ActionCard for site inspections as well as other operational efforts, Godfather’s Pizza has seen tremendous franchise expansion across the U.S. as well as an increase in site inspection scores and a reduction in time to resolution on customer issues.

Business Challenge

The initial goal was to digitize site inspections across all locations. Site inspections ensure the customer experience is the same from one location to another, and that standards such as recipes and procedures are being followed consistently. Godfather’s Pizza faced several challenges, including disparate manual forms and the inefficiency of using triplicate carbon copy printed forms. They also had difficulty in tracking and following through on on-site inspections and customer complaints.

“We had no way to track if inspection issues were being resolved without physically revisiting the locations. From a cost-benefit analysis, it didn’t make sense for us to fly out to California to do an audit and then fly back out in three weeks to see if it was done right,” said Bruce Just, Godfather’s Pizza’s VP of Development and Franchise Services. “So, the ability to do the site inspections online, attach a picture and have everything buttoned up in a nice bow was very attractive.”

Further, some of their franchise business consultants were a bit resistant to moving to an online solution for site inspections, so business leaders knew the solution had to be easy, user-friendly, and able to conduct inspections in offline mode.

Solution

By implementing ActionCard, the Godfather’s Pizza team was able to digitize the site inspections process, saving countless hours of manual work, improving average site score, and follow-through. They also digitized daily checklist workflows, allowing franchise owners to get rid of their papers and clipboards to ensure critical tasks are completed on time.

Just also noted that the ability to use ActionCard in offline mode was also a game-changer, as many franchise business owners conduct audits in locations where Wi-Fi isn’t always available. “We’ve had multiple companies try to compete with ActionCard, and the ability to work offline is one of the things that no other company has ever been able to replicate,” he said.

Godfather’s Pizza was also the driving force behind feature development in ActionCard, via Volano Software, the parent company of ActionCard. Together, they designed and implemented a customer-facing survey feature with a Godfather’s Pizza branded web page that allowed for near real-time resolution of customer complaints. Prior to that process flow, Godfather’s Pizza leveraged a generic web form that a customer would fill out, however, that often went unaddressed for 2 or 3 days over a weekend when the corporate offices were closed. By the time a franchise owner was aware of the issue, it could be 4 or 5 days after the form was submitted.

“The customer survey feature helped us get that information out – and a resolution – in near real-time,” noted Just, who added that the survey feature allowed them to track complaints and requests as well, adding an additional layer of accountability among franchise owners.

Godfather’s Pizza was also able to do custom work with Volano to integrate ActionCard into its backend CRM, creating unique identifiers for each location to sync data across the two systems seamlessly.

Just also highlighted another ActionCard feature developed in collaboration between the Godfather’s Pizza team and Volano: a mapping tool that displays all Godfather’s Pizza locations and color-codes them based on the time elapsed since the last in-person visit by a Franchise Business Consultant. The feature can also plot the best driving route amongst various locations, and that information can be sent to Google Maps.

“At a very easy glance, if I know I’m going to be driving from Omaha to Nashville, it’ll plot a route for me. Then I can see all the locations that are near that route and, of those locations, which ones are due for a visit. That helps me know if it’s worth my time to deviate from my optimal route,” said Just.

Business Outcomes

The implementation of ActionCard and the collaboration between Godfather’s Pizza and Volano Software led to significant improvements for Godfather’s Pizza over the last several years. Enhanced follow-through related to on-site inspections and customer complaints resulted in increased average inspection scores. Real-time resolution of customer complaints reduced resolution time from days to almost immediate. Finally, there’s the ability to scale business operations made possible by technology like ActionCard. In fact, Just noted that just 6 Franchise Business Consultants can handle Godfather’s Pizza 3,000+ locations because of its digital transformation. Just also said that having the ActionCard technology as part of their tech stack for franchise owners is a big selling point: “We have this technology available for them, and they don’t have to pay for it, so it’s pretty attractive.”

“We have more locations open today than at any point in our company’s history. Our positive working relationship with ActionCard and Volano has been instrumental in our growth, and we continue to be involved in beta testing and providing feedback for new features,” said Just. “The care and attention that has been afforded us simply by the fact that we’re both here in Omaha is something that’s hard to replicate.”