Dronedesk
Dronedesk case study
franchise company
How Tanner is growing his Blue Nose Aerial Imaging franchise with Dronedesk
One of the first questions a franchise owner gets is, "Why should I sign up with you instead of going it alone?"
It's a question that Tanner Harris, owner of Blue Nose Aerial Imaging, hears a lot.
And, thanks in part to Dronedesk, Tanner's answer is simple: "Your business will be easier to run and more successful."
What is Blue Nose Aerial Imaging?
Established during the pandemic, Blue Nose Aerial Imaging is a veteran-owned drone operations franchise that stretches across the entire United States of America. With many of its teams made up of professional airline or military pilots, Blue Nose has a reputation for delivering despite challenging conditions. (Hence the name: US Navy pilots and sailors across the world who cross the Arctic Circle are inducted into ‘the Order of the Blue Nose' to celebrate their achievement).
One of the challenges facing businesses in the US is finding a drone operations provider that can provide a consistently excellent service across the entire country. That's just what Blue Nose is focused on.
"If a customer has projects all over the country, they don't want to be calling up a drone pilot here and a drone pilot there. There's a real value in a consistent service across the country."
On the other side of that relationship, drone pilots face the challenge of not only finding customers, but setting up the processes and tools needed to deliver a quality service. To make sure pilots see the benefit of signing up with Blue Nose, Tanner needed to ensure he was offering more than they could get by going it alone.
"I'm focused on trying to add value for our franchise owners. That covers a lot of things: training, marketing, advertising, social media. But I have to make sure, first and foremost, that our operational system is in place."
But this operational system was where Tanner's business was coming unstuck.
Finding the right system
Tanner had already white labelled two different platforms for Blue Nose customers, but neither of them had worked for the business.
The first was built for franchise businesses, the second was geared towards lead generation and business development. But the franchisees didn't use them.
"It was a debacle. There was zero adoption, almost none of the franchisees adopted it. Then we came across Dronedesk and Dorian and it just solved so many headaches for us."
Tanner found the perfect balance in Dronedesk. Because our founder, Dorian, had designed it to be a one-stop shop for drone operators, the platform already included customer management tools as well as drone operations support.
That meant that Tanner could give his franchisees the tool they needed: a platform that made it as easy to manage leads and issue invoices as it did to run drone operations.
"The beauty of Dronedesk is that it's not only a CRM platform, in terms of ‘how do we manage our clients and build more leads', but it's also a drone operations platform."
That meant that Tanner could give his franchisees the tool they needed: a platform that made it as easy to manage leads and issue invoices as it did to run drone operations.
Dronedesk also offered two features that Tanner wanted for himself: flexibility and data.
Built for franchises
With new franchises opening up on a regular basis, Tanner needed to be able to issue Dronedesk licences quickly and easily.
"We can take one away one month, add ten more next month. That plug-and-play ability to open up private portals for our franchisees is unlike any other platform out there."
Tanner's other big requirement was a dashboard that would give him an overview of the business, of revenue, and a summary of how each franchise was performing.
"As the franchisor, I have oversight of how franchisees are performing and I can track their revenue."
All in all, Dronedesk seemed like the exact platform that Tanner needed. There was just one drawback: Dronedesk wasn't built to work in the US.
But Tanner soon discovered that was no problem at all.
"One of the wonderful things about Dorian is that he's so responsive. We can ask, "Hey, what about this? Can we do that?" And within hours, he says, "Yep, it's done." It's just wonderful! We've had a fantastic experience so far."
When Tanner asked Dorian if he could make Dronedesk work in the US, we got to work straightaway. And just two months later, Dronedesk was fully aligned with all US specifications and regulations.
The response was phenomenal.
Ready for adoption
The combination of CRM and drone operations support meant that Tanner's franchisees immediately saw the benefit of using Dronedesk.
"There was almost zero adoption of our previous software. But Dronedesk just flipped that on its head. The adoption of the platform happened almost overnight!"
And while the franchisees began to make use of Dronedesk, Tanner found it was making his own life easier too.
"Dronedesk just relieved so many headaches for me. It gives me a peace of mind. It's easy to use, it's affordable, it's easy to customise, and the franchisees love it."
Growing the business
Today, Dronedesk is a core part of Blue Nose's offering and helps to secure new customers too. Tanner sets up calls with potential franchisees specifically to show off what the software can do.
"The ability to white label Dronedesk and say, "This is your Blue Nose operations portal" that's a huge selling feature. It illuminates what prospects couldn't achieve with a piecemeal of different software platforms. It gives prospects a level of confidence that tells them, "Yeah, Blue Nose knows what they're doing.""
If you're struggling to find a software platform that does it all, start your free trial of Dronedesk. You can test all of our features for yourself, from CRM to drone operations, and see just how much Dronedesk can do for you.
All quotes are from Tanner Harris - Founder of Blue Nose Aerial Imaging
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