Excerpt: Kitchen Studio needed a robust on-brand way to deliver consistent and efficient onboarding across a growing, multi-location network. Like many retail and franchise-style businesses, they were balancing expansion with the need to reduce business risk by ensuring that every new team member received consistent high-quality induction efficiently.
Industry: Franchise / Retail / Kitchen Design & Installation; Locations: Multi-site; Challenge: Inconsistency, inefficiency, risk; Solution: Digital induction platform; Outcome: Delivering consistency, reducing risk, achieving 329% ROI and 91% engagement
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About Kitchen Studio
Kitchen Studio is New Zealand's only national kitchen retailer - and the country's most trusted kitchen brand nine years running.
Operating 16 stores nationwide, Kitchen Studio is about creating spaces where Kiwi families live, connect and thrive. Kitchen Studio aims to deliver a 'WOW' experience from inspiration to installation for their customers, backed by their double guarantees and transferable warranties.
The Challenge
With strong growth plans and multiple new franchisees on the horizon, CEO Dawn Engelbrecht knew their onboarding infrastructure and experience needed to reflect their market-leading brand.
At that stage, the onboarding process was inconsistent and adapted for each person, with multiple emails, paperwork, printed manuals, meetings, follow up calls and spreadsheets.
"The problem was evidentiary," Dawn explains. "Because there was no formal process or tracking, there was no evidence of what had been communicated."
This was already causing issues, with some franchisees not following process or guidelines, using the defence of “I didn’t know” or “nobody told me that”.
Not only did missed information mean answering the same questions, but also managing tricky situations in the network. It cost the leadership team time and effort resolving customer problems, massaging supplier relationships, mediating franchise tensions, resending network communications, and delivering remedial training.
The leadership team wanted an on-brand recruitment and onboarding solution that would reduce business risk by guaranteeing and proving consistent and complete messaging at every stage, while eliminating paperwork and administration - all at a price that made commercial sense.
The Solution
After evaluating the obvious options such as adapting their existing HR portal (too cumbersome) or customising their Learning Management System (budget prohibitive), Dawn looked at The Induction App. She says "We had a personal demo and knew it would do what we wanted - and the numbers worked."
Once confirmed, the Kitchen Studio was impressed with the efficiency of the implementation, as well as the development of the recruitment and onboarding programme.
"The Induction App team pulled it together in a very short space of time and, quite honestly, I cannot speak highly enough of the team and the end result."
The implementation process also delivered unexpected benefits. “It forced us to think through what was really required, by when, and by who" Dawn explains. "So now everyone gets the right info, at the right time. It helped us create a logical flow that works better for everyone – for our potential franchisees, and for us as the franchisor."
It starts right from potential franchisee exploration and due diligence, through to business set up, onboarding and training.
Even better the platform's user-friendly design and interface means the Kitchen Studio team can easily make online updates themselves, ensuring everyone gets the latest version, further increasing operational efficiency.
The Results
Dawn sums up The Induction App as:
"A fantastic, easy to use product."
The impact has been transformative across multiple metrics:
Return on Investment:
329% ROI based on time saved for the CEO and Franchise Support Manager - and that's just from franchisee onboarding. The leadership team expects this to increase significantly once employee onboarding rolls out across the network.
Time Savings:
The platform filters out unsuitable candidates early, saving Dawn up to 10 hours per time-waster. She's already identified three such prospects who didn't engage with the onboarding journey, which means either they weren't serious or they wouldn't make good franchisees by upholding the franchise system.
Engagement:
Current platform engagement sits at an impressive 91%.
- "Useful well laid out info
- "Smooth process"
- "I can see that Kitchen Studio has a well-structured management and design system"
- "Great so far, support from the group and support office has been amazing"
The first two franchisees through the new system loved the experience, reporting that it reinforced and embedded key information far more effectively than traditional methods.
Real-time Visibility:
The platform provides real-time tracking and reporting, as well as event notifications, and that transparency enables Kitchen Studio leadership to provide proactive support rather than reactive problem-solving. Dawn says:
"I love being able to log on and see where they are in the process, and how they're feeling."
Looking Ahead
Due to the value gained through franchisee onboarding, Kitchen Studio leadership now plans to extend the system for franchises to onboard their store teams, further embedding the brand standards across the network.
At franchisee level, systematic offboarding will be added to ensure smooth transitions and handovers upon on-sell, with joint visibility over tasks and timelines.
Both these actions will further increase their ROI as more of the network benefits from consistent, efficient, tracked onboarding.
Dawn says:
"I absolutely see the value in it. We're now going to use it for employee induction out in the network."
