How to Manage a Business With Multiple Locations

Is your multi-location business giving you sleepless nights?

Perhaps you’re in the restaurant business and you have a couple of eateries in your city or state. Or you run a network of medical practices across the country. Or you’re in the fitness industry and you own multiple fitness studios.

Regardless of the nature of your business, having multiple locations can present unique challenges that a single-location business wouldn’t give you. You could say “more locations, more problems!”

You’re looking for help and you’ve come to the right place. We’re sharing expert tips on how to run a multi-location business without losing your sleep.

Read on!

Be Strategic with Your Expansion

Opening multiple locations is part of a business expansion strategy.

We see a lot of entrepreneurs expanding aggressively without doing sufficient market research. If you’re not tactful with your expansion strategy, you’ll only be setting up yourself for big challenges in the near future.

Don’t open a new location unless there’s a market need for it. Plus, ensure your business has enough resources to support the new location for a certain period of time before it can reach sustainable profitability.

Hire Good Managers

A new location comes with new staffing needs. However, regardless of the type of your business or the number of workers the location needs, there’s one person you can’t go without: a branch manager.

This is the one person who can determine whether a new location succeeds or fails. As such, focus on hiring the best manager you can every time you’re opening a new location.

A strategy most business owners use is promoting from within; someone who understands how your business operates, instead of bringing in a new team leader.

If you’re not in a position to promote within, at least outsource the staffing function to a recruitment agency. This gives you the best chances of finding the best person to lead the new location.

Leverage Cloud Technology

Cloud technology makes it a lot easy to manage a business with multiple locations. You no longer have to rely on email to collaborate and communicate. There are several kinds of business tools that leverage cloud technology to make collaborating and sharing information easier.

Don’t shy away from investing in these technologies because of the cost. The initial investment in software and hardware can be steep, but you’ll earn big returns.

Hivecell is one of the solutions you should be looking into. Learn more about it before making a decision.

Develop and Implement Uniform Organizational Policies

You have a raft of policies that guide your operations. Although it’s a multi-location business and you might need dynamic policies to suit the unique needs of a certain location, it’s important to largely keep the policy structure uniform. This helps lead to the development of a clear organizational culture.

Run a Thriving Business with Multiple Locations

When you want to expand your business, you might have no choice but to open multiple locations. However, this comes with new challenges that can kill your business if you aren’t careful. But with this guide on how to manage a multi-location business, you’re now in a better position to find success.

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