Cloud POS for Franchisor Needs

​Who is Ali’s Uniforms?

Ali’s Uniforms is a wholesale supplier and manufacturer of school uniforms and other school accessories. They have their own stitching unit in Lahore where the uniforms are stitched and then brought to the warehouse from where the stock is supplied to the retailers in the various cities of Punjab.

What is the Business Model of Ali’s Uniforms?

Ali’s manufacture, sell, and market their products under the brand name of Ali’s Uniforms. For access to a wider market in the country, they use  the Franchise model, this means any retailer selling Ali’s Uniform uses the brand name and share the profit percentage with Ali’s.

However, Ali’s Uniform franchise model is different. In a standard Franchise model, all stock is controlled by the Franchisor and the franchisee sells only the products supplied by the franchisor. But in Ali’s case, the franchisees, while they use the Ali’s brand name and sell uniforms, can also buy stock of various accessories like school bags, lunch boxes, etc. from different vendors and sell them to their customers.

What was the Problem?

The problem stemmed from Ali’s Franchise model. Ali’s needed to keep track of the sale of their product (school uniforms), but they wanted to give their Franchisees enough autonomy to buy other school accessories from any local vendor. They were concerned with the sale of only their product.

In a standard franchise model, the franchisor defines products at the head office and the franchisees are provided the same database. Ali’s didn’t want this.

How Cloud Based POS Nimbus RMS Solved the Problem?

Nimbus RMS is a web-based retail management system that has both single store and multi-store versions. Because Ali’s wanted independent franchisees they opted for the personal version of Nimbus.

And this how the problem of Franchises special needs was solved:

One user account at each Franchisee

All the franchises of Ali’s Uniforms use the personal version of Nimbus cloud retail software. And as the personal version comes with three users, one user was assigned to Ali’s Uniforms with special rights.

Since nimbus RMs also has a robust security module that enables users to assign rights, Ali’s Uniform user has the right to view stock and sales reports.  Thus now there is no additional burden on Ali’s Uniform, and they can easily check the stock and sale report of uniforms by simply logging in to the account of their franchisee.

This is Not the Real screen of Ali’s Uniform’s account. It’s just an example of a user account

Franchisees’ Accounts management

To manage their franchisees accounts and keep track of payables and receivables, Ali Uniform defines each franchisee as their customer. On the customer screen  each franchise is defined as a credit customer (to maintain a customer ledger, you need to define the customer as credit customer). For the complete information about account receivable and payables of each customer, the customer ledger report is used. And for selling to their franchisees at wholesale rates, Ali’s uses the Customer Type based prices feature of Nimbus RMS. The customer type based price feature helps you define different prices for different customers.

This is Not the Real screen of Ali’s Uniform’s account. It’s just an example of Customer Definition screen

The customer  ledger report in Nimbus RMs provides complete information about account receivable and payables of each customer.

Not the Real screen of Ali’s Uniform’s account.

Conclusion

With just one user account in each Franchisee’s store, and using only internet service, now Ali’s Uniform can easily check the stock and sales of their product at all franchise stores. And they can  now easily track and analyze all business metrics, such as total sales and stock, and check live performance reports on the Nimbus Dashboard.