New Years’ Resolutions for your Business: Starting Your Franchise on the Right Foot

As the singularly challenging year of 2020 draws to a close, you may be thinking of setting your New Year’s Resolutions early. In many cases, this is the time when you decide that next year, you will take charge of your destiny. If you’re a business owner, then next year will be the year you bring your business to the next level. If you’re thinking that this might be a good time to create and share opportunity, you should give franchising some serious thought.

Franchising is a great growth strategy if you’re capital-strapped, your business has a strong brand proposition, and if it particularly benefits from driven and engaged managers. It takes a little bit more setup than simply opening another branch to your existing business, but there are some key benefits you don’t get from other business models. Most directly, it leverages the benefits of a direct capital injection and a dedicated owner-manager while allowing you to retain substantial control over the broader direction and essence of your brand. There’s also the innovation gains from expanding your talent pool, and creates opportunities to protect and elevate the intellectual property that sets your brand apart.

So now that you’ve decided to give franchising a second look, what are some of the things you have to do to get started?

In the majority of cases, we find that prospective franchisors need a combination of services across different disciplines from franchise consulting to legal, marketing and recruitment. It’s important to keep it simple, by determining the most desirable outcome and prioritise an action plan that’s focused on delivering value and achieving that goal. Here’s a condensed version of the path many successful franchises have tread.

First, define the strategic direction of your business, identify the gaps and then develop a plan overcome the most critical elements impacting growth and profitability. Ideally, you should conduct market research, analyse the competitive landscape, then define the core objectives and the next steps. Developing a financial model to help determine the feasibility of your business will help prevent a lot of future headaches, and is a requirement for any serious prospective franchisor. Extending this model to a franchise network will also help you evaluate the value proposition in relation to the requirements of your head-office and that of your franchisees.

The recommended process focuses on improving sales and profitability. The goal is to enable scalability, by implementing technology, developing your head office resource, documenting your systems, processes and training. The business transformation exercise is an active engagement between our respective teams to create a competitive and compelling franchise offer. It is ideal to have a team of cross-functional experts help you devise the operations, organisational structure and recruitment process, the brand and marketing strategy, the cultural framework and the appropriate business technology.

This results in cost effective head office management, training and support, a reduction in the upfront and ongoing costs for you and your franchisees, driving brand consistency and ensuring franchisee compliance.

If you get the first steps in your franchising journey right, you will be well on your way to growing your brand, creating opportunity for those around you, and generating positive future value for yourself.