Ever since Emerge! founder Kamal Singh purchased his first franchise out of bankruptcy in 2009, he and the company he leads have found success by finding value and opportunities in unexpected places.

For years, purchasing distressed franchises and turning them around provided a path to growth for the firm that would come to be Emerge!. In 2015, the company purchased seven underperforming KFC restaurants in Louisiana, breaking in with the Yum! Brands family of brands. Since then, Emerge has expanded to include 177 restaurants – KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Sonic – creating a culture of success wherever they go.

One secret to the success of Emerge!, says Chief Operating Officer Mick Rosckowff, is its engagement with Delaget, which helps find untapped opportunities for improvement. “It helps us find things to streamline and finds efficiencies,” he says. “We’ve got the data, there’s a lot out there, but Delaget has really helped us collect it and find correlations.”

Turning Urgency into Action

Rosckowff says that Delaget’s solutions, including Coach to manage operations data and Detect for loss prevention, help Emerge! act with urgency to continually improve. “Urgency is one of our core values,” he says. “Urgency matters in business. We’re moving fast, and always trying new things. Delaget gives us a one-stop-shop to see what’s working” and act quickly to double down on successes or respond to issues.

For Emerge!, there are five key areas where Delaget solutions have helped the company’s restaurants succeed, whether they are turnaround candidates or brand new stores:

• Consistent training of people at every level: Getting everyone using the same, simple tool ensures that people will use it and that data will be consistent across stores. “It has to be easy to teach and easy to use to build a good routine,” Rosckowff says

• Freeing up the time of managers to do what they do best: Less time spent managing data means more time out in the field, meeting with employees and solving problems. District managers are better able to help stores with operations, recruiting and staffing.

• Flagging irregularities for immediate resolution: Seeing what’s happening in stores in real-time lets the main office spot and resolve issues quickly. Rosckowff says he has been able to catch theft quickly when the system flagged unusual refund activity, and spot bad habits at closing time by pulling last-hour reports, then reinforce proper protocols. “In 30 minutes, I found $3,000 in losses and could identify where and when they happened.”

• Elevating outdated processes quickly in new acquisitions: Rosckowff recalled one newly acquired restaurant group that was managing all data in a massive spreadsheet, laboriously updated by district managers. “We had 120 hours of weekly admin suddenly disappear across a team,” he said. “We had groups that were still using paper reports and fax machines, and restaurants that didn’t have any targets.” Vastly improved efficiency and greater business rigor meant tangible improvements could be realized quickly.

• Providing a single view for each brand: With four brands to manage, each with its own Key Performance Indicators and reporting standards, the ability to toggle quickly between each brand while still operating on the same underlying system is invaluable. “We gain efficiencies not having to dig through multiple systems,” Rosckowff says. “When it comes to multi-brand operations, we really need it.”