Introduction
Blossom Home Care turned to Tech4T in early 2020 to ensure their UK franchise territory mapping was optimised for success.
As experts in franchise territory optimisation, Tech4T had been highly recommended to them by franchise legal specialists with experience of their industry-leading franchise territory mapping system, Territory Runner.
About Blossom Home Care
Established in 2015 by husband and wife team John and Fiona Leggott (a qualified and experienced community staff nurse), Blossom Home Care is a multi-award winning domiciliary care company.
Based in northern England, the company now operates in 20 locations across the UK, providing everything from daily home care visits to dementia care and rehabilitation, palliative, and disability support.
Its focus on transparency and honesty, and the provision of a high quality service that includes creating bespoke holistic care plans for each client, has led to it becoming one of the fastest growing domiciliary care companies in the UK, with an enviable reputation and ambitious growth plans for the future.
The Challenge
Having decided to expand their business nationally through franchising, John and Fiona wanted to ensure that each Blossom Home Care franchise territory offered the same opportunity for success for each franchisee.
This meant each territory had to be designed and mapped not based on arbitrary geographic boundaries, but rather on sound demographic and economic data relevant to the specialist services they provided.
They additionally wanted to ensure that their franchisees could easily see and interrogate key information such as location ‘hot spots’ and postcode level demographics that would enable them to grow their franchise territories quickly and cost effectively.
And all this vital information had to be presented in a simple to understand way, as the company was often contacted by prospective franchisees – as well as foreign investors – with varying levels of IT and English language skills.
The Solution
After spending the time to understand Blossom Home Care’s objectives and ambitions, Tech4T worked with them to define the best criteria and specifications for their future franchise territories.
This included analysis of how many target customers would be in each territory and the amount of time franchisees and their staff would spend driving between different points in their area.
This led to Tech4T creating a bespoke version of their Territory Runner franchise territory mapping system for the company, which included the following features:
- The locations already covered by the business were recreated onto fully interactive and zoomable maps, with the postcodes of existing customer locations plotted on them.
- The customer location data was merged with demographic data, including population by age and social status.
- Based on the agreed criteria, commercially sound territories were mapped across the UK, each of which contained demographic data specific to each location.
- The spread of privately owned properties within each territory was shown on each map.
- Nursing and residential care homes were also plotted across the country by territory.
- A bespoke colour scheme was designed for the company so their personnel could see at a glance which franchise territories were allocated, unallocated, and temporarily assigned to a franchisee.
Client Benefits
The bespoke Territory Runner system created for Blossom Home Care provides a number of benefits that enable them to maximise their franchise sales potential and further grow the business across the UK. These include:
- The ability to send franchising prospects a detailed map and robust demographics data of their proposed territory so they can see for themselves their sales potential. This includes data on how many people over 65-years of age there are in the area.
- The ability to easily see the locations and boundaries of existing and planned franchise territories and amend these when required to ensure the best coverage.
- The ability to easily design new franchise areas based on hard data and in-built tools such as heatmapping. This visually shows in an easy-to-understand way where there are high concentrations of potential customers, as well as areas to avoid.
- The ability to combine demographic information with street level map data from systems such as Microsoft’s Streetside to support marketing campaigns. Particularly useful when selecting the best areas within a territory for leaflet drops, Google local ads, or any other local promotional activities carried out by franchisees.
- The ability to show potential franchisees the drive time or travel distance from any point in their territory – such as their home – to other locations in their area. This enables them to optimise their coverage and reduce the time they spend travelling between various points.
- The ability to show detailed Ordnance Survey data when zooming into a territory on an interactive map, providing a more granular level of detail that is helpful for franchisees who want greater understanding of their territory.
- The ability to easily edit data on the maps so they can choose which information to share with potential franchisees, as well as prospective investors.
- The ability to easily print off maps and data sheets for use in franchise contracts & documentation.
Client Feedback
John Leggott, Co-Founder of Blossom Home Care
“Tech4T’s Territory Runner system is brilliant and provides us with everything we need for our franchise growth in a simple and easy-to-use way.
“We can send branded maps to potential franchisees, easily see what locations are sold or unsold, can drill down into essential data, and quickly see postcode level demographic information, as well as hot spots which offer the most potential.
“It’s also fast to use and enables us to share key information with others whatever their level of IT or language skills.
“We offer some of the largest franchise territories in the UK and thanks to Territory Runner our franchisees and their staff can easily plan how they will manage their area and reduce their travelling time between clients.
“And Tech4T have proved to be a fantastic partner to us. They are responsive, nothing is too much trouble for them, and they provide support whenever we need it.
“Our growth plans include expanding internationally and Tech4T will definitely be by our side as we do this.”
About Tech4T
Tech4T is a data analytics company specialising in UK and global franchise territory design, location planning, and field force (sales team) optimisation.
Each bespoke solution we provide – for franchise mapping or franchise territory optimisation or any of our other location intelligence services – is underpinned by advanced demographic and customer targeting to ensure that clients’ sales are maximised.
Our industry-leading interactive mapping software is coupled with first class customer service, and we work closely with our clients to ensure their franchise territory design, sales territories, and locations are optimised for the greatest success.
