With the recent launch of our new Branch Insights feature, we sat down with our product owner Callum Graham, to chat about what went into the launch!
Hey Callum! What inspired the development of Branch Market Insights?
Branch Insights is really the evolution of the Market Insights feature we delivered last year. Previously, managers could compare up to three competitors at a brand level; which was a game changer for central teams to compare against other key brands, but didn’t enable each individual location to compare against their direct competitors in their local market.
Now, Branch Insights personalises data geographically, letting venues set their own competitors, and see how they’re performing not just against national competitors, but the coffee shop next door that might be drawing their traffic, even if they’re in a different sub sector. You get more relevant, location-based benchmarks you can actually influence as a site manager.
How does Branch Insights work , and what can a site expect from benchmarking with Branch Insights?
It’s very much a like-for-like with our previous brand-level Market Insights, but delivered at a branch level. You set your competitors and see data points across food, drink, service, value, atmosphere, along with key metrics like how many social reviews you’re getting compared to your competitors. The aim is to help managers pinpoint where they’re doing better, and where there’s room for improvement, based on data that’s genuinely relevant to their business and guests.
What kind of decisions do we expect operators to make with these new local insights?
Clarity should motivate action: it highlights areas of weakness, flags opportunities for improvement, and prompts managers to dig deeper into ‘why’ their scores may be lower. Ultimately, Branch Insights helps site managers influence their business performance, while measuring the impact of changes with the wider tools in 125. Equally, if a team sees their venue out-performing their competitors in other areas, such as speed and friendliness of service, it gives them the opportunity to double down on this and make it their USP.
As a team, how did we come to develop this feature? What did user feedback look like?”
When Market Insights went live last year, operators responded really positively, but overwhelmingly, they asked for this kind of analysis at the site level. The feature’s prioritisation was a direct result of client demand, especially voiced through our advisory boards. It’s what people wanted, and we’ve been keen to deliver based on that feedback.
Looking ahead, how do you see Branch Insights evolving?
Our next development with this feature is summarising the sentiment behind key themes driving reviews providing users with accessible actionable data, amongst other developments. The key with these features is staying agile and listening as clients start using them; innovation is at the forefront of our business now and we’ll continue to adapt and grow it based on their feedback and real-world use cases – we’re always listening to what our customers need, and we act on that.
Want to see how it works for yourself? Book a demo with out team today: