The challenge
River Pools Franchising LLC, a dynamic pool installation and branding franchisor, found themselves treading water when it came to maintaining consistency and efficiency across their expanding network. With multiple locations and a complex product catalog, they struggled with document management, proposal creation, and ensuring brand compliance. Their previous system lacked customization options and integration capabilities, leading to time-consuming processes and potential errors.
The solution
Using PandaDoc’s Enterprise features and HubSpot integration, River Pools Franchising now efficiently manages documents across their franchise network and enables its reps to create customized proposals in real-time. With Advanced Reporting, they maintain better oversight of their franchise operations, while CPQ allows them to streamline their complex pricing process for various pool models and accessories.
By leveraging PandaDoc to the fullest, River Pools Franchising has reduced their time to create a proposal by 1–1.5 hours per document and improved overall efficiency by 60%. This has not only enhanced the customer experience but also helped maintain brand consistency across their growing franchise network.
Navigating franchise expansion
River Pools Franchising, LLC gives their franchises access to platforms such as PandaDoc and the integration with HubSpot is part of their franchise model. While growth as a national brand is a goal of the company, with expansion came challenges in consistency and efficiency across the organization.
Mike McCormick, River Pools Franchising’s Director of Employee Education and Resource Management, outlined the struggles: “It was a matter of continuity with the distribution of contracts, change orders, proposals, etc. Even within an individualized location, a written contract or a digital contract was through an Adobe format where you had a signature field, but many of the things within the contract were not malleable to each specific customer.”
The company needed a more robust and HubSpot-integrated solution. They sought a one-track system that could handle their complex product catalog, maintain brand consistency, and give them better oversight of their franchises.
Unlocking efficiency with Enterprise features
River Pools Franchising chose to upgrade to PandaDoc’s Enterprise plan for better continuity, compliance, and efficiency across their franchise network.
McCormick, who oversaw the transition, highlighted the before and after: “Upgrading from Document Analytics to PandaDoc’s Advanced Reporting gave me the insights I needed to ensure compliance and consistency across our franchise locations. Document analytics gave us a view into interactions on the document level, but with Advanced Reporting, we can do a system wide audit to spot strengths or weaknesses and improve our sales process at scale.”
The Enterprise plan’s Advanced Reporting quickly proved invaluable for maintaining oversight and ensuring compliance across the franchise network. It’s allowed River Pools Franchising to manage outdated proposals, as well as change orders and branding as needed. Crucially, it’s also allowed them to identify issues and quickly resolve them.
McCormick explained: “Recently, I did a system-wide audit and went through every completed document. […] The numbers of completions and documents drafted, the efficiency, didn’t match. It was easy right away to identify that.” From there, he was able to also find old proposals that were missing signature fields, as well as documents with incorrect logos, language, addresses, and more. “Those sorts of things became holistically glaring once I was able to just scratch the surface of the reporting.”
This deeper level of insight allowed River Pools Franchising to find and address issues quickly and holistically, improving their overall document management process and ensuring consistency across all locations.
Revolutionizing proposals with PandaDoc’s CPQ
Implementing PandaDoc’s CPQ functionality was a game-changer for River Pools Franchising. The complex nature of pool installation, with various models and accessories, had previously made proposal creation slow and error-prone.
McCormick described how they leveraged the smart content feature: “For example, a pool model that has both a swimming pool capacity and a hot tub: immediately, you’re gonna need additional equipment that comes along with that pool model selection. So we toggled that, if this model is selected, add this price quote function.”
Previously, sales representatives had to remember all details manually, leading to costly oversights. McCormick gave an example from when he was previously in sales: “Let’s say you want a gas heater on your pool. Well, one of the things you’re gonna need for gas heaters is plumbing from gas lines. A lot of times (newer) salespeople (like myself) were just throwing a gas heater on the proposal or contract, and forgetting to measure the amount of gas line plumbing needed.” This led to costly confusion with project management, operations and ultimately their customers.
With PandaDoc’s CPQ, these issues have been significantly reduced.
“Those oversights are being diminished rapidly. The things that get missed often are often not missed any longer because of having these functionality bundles and smart content tied together,” McCormick explained.
This improvement not only saves time but also potentially increases revenue by ensuring each proposal includes all the necessary components and labor.
Measuring improvements and diving into the future
Implementing PandaDoc’s Enterprise features led to substantial, quantifiable improvements for River Pools Franchising.
These efficiency gains have had a ripple effect, improving not just the speed of proposal creation but also accuracy and customer experience. Plus: “showcasing the documents to customers in real time is having a profound impact on close ratios,” McCormick said.
Looking to the future, River Pools Franchising continues to explore and implement new PandaDoc features. McCormick’s enthusiasm for the ongoing improvements and his participation in beta testing new features demonstrate the company’s commitment to constant optimization.
Overall, PandaDoc’s Enterprise plan has revolutionized River Pools Franchising’s operations, providing them with the tools to manage their complex franchise network efficiently, create accurate proposals quickly, and maintain brand consistency. As McCormick summarized, “Holistically, it has brought again continuity from franchisor to franchisee. It’s brought oversight for corporate compliance, which helps reduce legalities and confusion of the brands, which is huge for us. It has brought ease and reduction of anxiety. It’s brought enhanced customer experience.”
This transformation has improved not only internal processes but also the customer experience, positioning River Pools Franchising LLC to make an even bigger splash in the competitive pool installation market.
Ready to save time and boost efficiency across your operations? Book a PandaDoc demo.
Disclaimer: Each River Pools location is an independently owned and operated entity and is not an agent of Thursday Pools, LLC (“Thursday”) or River Pools Franchising, LLC (“Franchising”). Neither Thursday nor Franchising is responsible for the installation of the pool or any other obligations of an Installer.
I oversaw the transition to PandaDoc’s Enterprise plan, and being the sole PandaDoc admin for two years, I can confidently say that the features available have been a game changer for our franchise organization. We can instantly pull up detailed reports and automate tasks, like updating HubSpot deal records based on activity in our proposals. PandaDoc’s CPQ is a standout feature, offering a much more attractive and streamlined experience for our reps to build proposals
