Scaling 400+ salons with Zenoti: A game changer for Paulsons Group

So the biggest thing about Paulsons and the entire group is, we have around 7,500 employees right now. We have around 380 to 390 salons which are franchised and around 45 salons which are company-owned outlets. So, totally around 435 to 436 outlets.

Zenoti backs the entire claim by the way it approaches the entire system in terms of speed, ease of software use, and training process. We were very skeptical about working with cloud-based solutions. The way the entire thing was done, it's so much faster, actually, to be very honest, than the earlier software because [with] the earlier software, every time you need to load data, it takes a time for the processor. This is much faster. I could finish a bill in less than 30 seconds.

The initial process of training by the entire Zenoti team was amazing because they taught the entire team of Paulsons as if they were laymen; all the managers and everybody were taught as laymen. I think you guys have a small university kind of setup where you train all the staff, and to train, let us say, even if it is two managers per outlet [adding up to] 600 members in less than a month and to make sure that onboarding is done for 300 outlets.

Toni & Guy is based on appointments. Everything is based on appointment because there are, let's say, around seven or eight people per salon all on appointments. So, they take around eight to nine appointments per day. So, everything is scheduled.

The number of walk-ins directly without appointment is less than 1%. The appointment process is very detailed and very easy to operate. The second thing is the product inventory in the stock-level management.

Even the SMS integration, which is going on, we saw a sample. I think it will prevent pilferage, which is a big problem in south of India. Right now, SMS goes to the customer that you have paid so much amount and so there's zero chance of theft from a franchisee business. There are a lot of other challenges where some of the franchisees do underbill to avoid royalty payments, so we are able to monitor all those data very closely to see what is happening there and whether to interfere in such issues. So, this really helps us in managing multiple outlets from a master franchise or brand owner's perspective.

Apart from that, the fact that I can go to social media, I can advertise a haircut and somebody can click on the haircut and just book the same appointment directly through Zenoti software in an online booking process – I'm very excited about stuff like that too.

We are in the process of integrating our own Club Envy card, which is a loyalty program that Zenoti readily agreed to do for us. The earlier processes did not permit that because we had to maintain separate trackers. Right now, it is much easier with Zenoti because we are able to integrate the entire system along with our existing loyalty program. So, to maintain this is a big [advantage]. Most salons are on loyalty process because many of the customers are coming back on loyalty basis and loyalty cards.

So, this integration and everything has really been helpful for us. Even the marketing process, right now, we are in the process of developing where we can directly book appointments from Instagram, where we integrate our marketing tools with Zenoti. So, overall, it's been a good experience for us. Anybody who wants to really grow a salon chain should give an option to Zenoti and should hear and see before deciding on other software. We believe that this will really increase around 8 to 12% of the existing business just by the software.