Like many franchisees, Polly Management faces the challenge of ensuring consistent operations across their many locations. With around 700 employees, the multi-unit restaurant company operates 26 Dairy Queen locations along with pizza and Mexican food brands across an expansive territory covering Michigan down to Southern Indiana. 

They needed a centralized training hub to drive company-wide alignment on policies, procedures and cultural philosophies for their 190 managers. They also wanted to provide streamlined promotion training in a platform that was easy to navigate. They found their solution to both with Trainual.

“Trainual has helped our organization improve so much with just the operational standards, expectations, and consistency in all of our locations.”
<blockquoteauthor>Kimberly Armes, director of operations at Polly Management<blockquoteauthor>

A training tool bringing consistency to multiple franchise locations

With locations spanning across state lines, maintaining consistency across Polly Management's 20+ restaurants was a significant challenge. And prior to Trainual, Polly Management struggled with disorganization in their training. "We were using Word documents and just trying to organize it, and then we were like, ‘how do we get this out to our employees and our managers?’ And it [was] very convoluted,” shared Kimberly Armes, Polly’s director of operations.

They needed a way to get their managers operating consistently, no matter where they were. And when Polly Management signed up with Trainual, the difference in constancy was stark. "[Trainual] honestly brought consistency between all of our stores. We share people in between locations, and it has gotten away from ‘This is how we do it in this store.’ We don't have that anymore, which is really kind of great. Now, it’s just ‘This is how Polly Management does it.’"

And as a larger business with multiple locations, Trainula has become a one-stop shop for any and all questions about their systems, routines, and processes — one that’s easy to update and share with their team so that their consistency is never in question.

“The thing I like the most is when you do update something and if you have users assigned to the roles or departments, it will push out an email so they can just click on it and go through it, and then you can track who has been through the updated content or track the progress for each user, and it is really great,” shared Kimberly.

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A money-saving resource that's easy to search

Post-Word docs but pre-Trainual, Polly’s franchisor, Dairy Queen, implemented a new training platform for daily operations. But the company found that it lacked a desired search functionality for their manager training. "If you were to search anything, say ClickUp as an example, you would have to have ‘ClickUp’ in the title, and that was the only thing it would search. But in Trainual, you could search ‘ClickUp,’ and it will break it down to the title, the course, the steps, the lessons, whatever it is. It will bring up anything that ClickUp is in. So that's what really drove us to change over to Trainual," said Kimberly.

So, while their general Dairy Queen product and equipment training is handled by the franchisor’s platform, Polly decided to implement Trainual for their managers. The search capabilities were a game-changer, enabling managers to quickly find the information they need. 

And now that the majority of their training content is available in Trainual, Polly are seeing the time and money-saving benefits. “Yes, it's a little bit of time and money upfront, but in the end, [Trainual] saves so much.” 

“[Trainual has] saved so much time, and it's saving a lot of money just because people know exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and if they have a question, they have access to everything that they need to know.”

A platform that outlines continuous learning initiatives 

Trainual also enabled Polly Management to fully outline their "Pathway to Promotion" program in one central location. The training program clearly details the requirements for career advancement within the organization — providing full transparency for employees interested in rising through Polly’s ranks. “It's kind of nice because if you are a crew member and you want to become a district manager one day, we have all of that laid out.”

Kimberly, who also worked her way up a crew member position to become the director of operations, knows the benefit this promotion training has for their team. "Now that we have the [promotion] training in Trainual, our general managers know exactly what to train, when to train, how to train, and it's just made everything so much easier. It really has."

“This is why we've switched to Trainual, why we really love Trainual, and why we will continue to use it. I'm hoping now that I've developed all the content, I [can] become more proficient and learn how to use it to its fullest potential.”

With Trainual, Polly Management has streamlined training, improved consistency, and paved the way for continuous learning and growth. And as the company expands the training within their account, they can continue to benefit from everything the platform provides.