Congratulations! You must be thinking about opening up your next location. Running a successful multi-location enterprise is a clear sign of success for any business. Your business model has proven to work, and now you want to keep the momentum going. Being in the position to open another location is thrilling, but replicating magic can be incredibly hard.

There are numerous benefits to expanding your reach, such as:

• Growing your brand to a new client pool or geographic area.
• Increasing overall production capacity.
• Scaling your revenue reach.
• Opportunities for new business partnerships.
• Added value to your original business.

However, with everything that goes into opening a new location, it’s not always as straightforward as it should be. And we don’t just mean securing the brick-and-mortar storefront; we mean getting an entirely new crew up to speed. Don’t worry – as daunting as it may seem – there are life-hacks.

Here are our top tricks for opening your next location faster than you can say “live long and Prospr.”

Store your Resources in a Centralized Location

The quickest way to get your new location up and running is to have a centralized database to efficiently make use of the work you already did opening location 1. Running the brand level operation out of a centralized place, versus silo-ed store to store allows you to work smart, and less hard. This means the work you did to open location 1, benefits the opening of location 2 and so on. Then you can give your new team members access to best practice guidelines, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and employee handbooks easily and ensures all new team members are getting consistent messages store to store.

It’s also crucial to note that you should have one single database for all this information, and each employee should have access to the documents they need. A cloud-based searchable resource library enables employees to pull up the information they need when they need it so they’re never stuck between choosing to giving customers potentially incorrect information or making them wait for confirmation.

Create a Centralized Foundation For Culture & Communication

Having a centralized foundation for where your brand “lives” helps you quickly bring locations into the fold. New employees and storefronts don’t have to work as hard to feel apart of the existing business.

New team members have access to past announcements, they can be a part of the excitement of the new location opening, and feel the pulse of the brand day 1. The only way for that to happen is if you have a solid foundation in place for your original stores, versus siloed private text groups or worse, post-its on computers for comms.

Implement a Group Chat and Directory

Setting up a new location leads to many employee questions, and it’s incredibly inefficient when team members have to wait until the person they need to talk to is in the office at the same time as them. With a system that enables moderated and secure chat lines, employees can send direct messages to managers or ask a question in an all-team forum. More importantly, they can find who they’re looking for, and feel unencumbered to reach out and connect.

Another way to streamline your new location’s opening is to create a seamless way for team members to identify issues and quickly relay them up the ladder via facilities tickets. Remember that most people starting at your newest location will be learning how to be a part of the business for the first time. So make sure you give them plenty of resources and guidance on where to find information.

Tools like Prospr centralize all of your communication needs into one easy-to-use mobile and desktop app. Employees are able to find information quickly and easily through our resources feature, access business directories to find team members at a snap, and message anyone within the organization with just a few clicks.

Standardize Your Starting Points

You’re not starting over from scratch; you’re starting with knowledge from other locations that can be pulled over to your new store. Whether this is your second location or your seventh, it’s helpful to create a standardized starting package that you can use for each new location you open.

Standardizing your starting points helps you launch your new locations with ease because you’ll be able to plug and play your procedures. It will make it significantly easier for your managers to onboard new crew members and get the new site ready for a stellar customer experience.

Since you’ve already done the heavy lifting of developing your brand, creating a standardized starting procedure package for a new location shouldn’t be too difficult. Going back to the idea of establishing a centralized information database, your procedural package should be readily available to your team members through this central resource.

Prospr Faster

Getting your new location up and running twice as fast requires having the right tools to help you get your employees exactly what they need when they need it.

Prospr provides everything you need to scale your business and get your new crew members up to speed. From automated multi-location scheduling to our searchable resource library that’s updated in real-time, our system is the solution to all of the new location pains you could possibly have.

We’ll help your new location run like a well-oiled machine by providing you with a centralized database that connects your entire team across all your sites, interactive bulletin boards, compliant communication, and a user-friendly in-app directory. Plus, we make the workplace more fun with the ability to share gifs, videos, and photos via chats and discussion threads.

Scaling is simple when you have a resource center with everything from facilities and service ticketing to standardized procedure templates.

Want to see how you can set up your new location faster and make life easier for your entire team? Schedule your demo today.