About Driving Miss Daisy
Driving Miss Daisy is a Franchise providing a companion driving service. More than a taxi service, a Driving Miss Daisy driver provides personalised assistance from beginning point through to the final destination, assisting each client to safely leave their current location and safely reach their end point (often with a handover), tailoring the support service to meet individual needs.
This service is particularly valued by:
- Elderly people who have mobility or cognitive challenges, needing to go to appointments (often in confusing places like hospitals) for social visits, on shopping trips, or just for coffee outings
- People with disabilities (temporary or ongoing - mental, physical or emotional) needing extra support to get around
- Dependent children who need adult accompaniment and handover at destination.
The Challenge
Andrew Kirkpatrick was appointed General Manager of Driving Miss Daisy New Zealand in 2022, when the business had been operating for 13 years. He was specifically hired by the founders to bring a modern commercial approach to the business. Until then the founders were fully focused on providing the incredible customer experience which Driving Miss Daisy is known for.
Andrew explains:
“When I looked strategically at some of the challenges and opportunities for the way franchisees worked, and the way they worked with their employees, it was obvious to me there was a digital solution to streamlining all of that and making it more efficient - lifting workload from franchisees and the franchise.”
The Leadership team’s expectations were for any solution to increase the value of the franchise through streamlining, systemising and automating, with expected benefits of:
- Less time on admin and compliance for all stakeholders - the franchise, the franchisees and drivers
- Less time, and increased quality and consistency of training, for both franchisees and drivers
- Better visibility and reporting across the whole network
- Readily meeting compliance reporting requirements for key partners (ie. accurate, complete and timely).
Franchisee’s expectations were that any solution would make it easier to run a (profitable) business with:
- Reduced admin and reporting
- Easier induction and training
- No added cost.
I want people to look at driving Miss Daisy as a great franchise to buy into because of the fact that we’re leading the field. I want people to look at Driving Miss Daisy as a good franchise because they know it’s desirable when it’s time for them to come out, there’s liquidity, the ability to exit when they want. Because it’s one thing to buy into a franchise, but it’s another if nobody else wants to buy into it when you’re ready to sell.
General Manager
The Results
The overall impact has been to transform Driving Miss Daisy from a manually-intensive operation to a digitally-enabled, scalable business with improved quality control and significantly reduced administrative overhead.
In the first year, Return on Investment was about 394% due to the initial set up costs. This was calculated on how much more efficient it has become for each person - drivers, franchisees and the franchisor. In subsequent years, ROI is expected to increase to over 633% per annum.
Beyond ROI from time saved, consistency in onboarding and compliance also provides a financial benefit from improved reporting in the longer term, for internal purposes and to satisfy external partners’ needs.
General Manager
Franchisees have embraced the new way of doing things:
- “It’s great, easy to use, far less administrative than what has been the case previously.”
- “Awesome tool to save time on getting new drivers on board and having a way to track their progress."
- “Takes away a lot of admin from me, including remembering which forms etc. Gives drivers ownership over their training. Mainly takes away my stress of remembering stuff!”
- “10/10 Easy to use, comprehensive, all in one place, personalised.”
- “It’s moving forward with the times... it’s the way of the future to be honest.”
And Driving Miss Daisy drivers, the frontliners of the franchise, like it too. Overall engagement, measured throughout their onboarding and training, is currently sitting at 82%.
For us it’s about streamlining efficiency, visibility and just a much better process all around. And strategically that’s where we want the business to go.
Andrew Kirkpatrick
