Franchise Update Magazine Issue II, 2017 | Page 46

CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS
Finally, Holt made a hard decision:
he hired two developers to work in-
house. That decision wasn’t without
some anxiety, however. “When you go
into this blind and it’s a completely for-
eign subject to you, it’s overwhelming
and scary,” he says. “At one point, we
considered giving up.”
Those painful first steps, however, did
finally bring him the business advantage
he sought—including additional, unan-
ticipated benefits. For example, he says,
“If our in-house team has a good idea,
we can make abrupt changes. If we were
still using an outside firm, that change
would cost us.” In some ways, he says,
the new software is working too well.
“We have a mechanism where you can
report bugs and request new features.
Now one of our biggest struggles is how
to manage all those requests!”
The new software al