Consistency Is the Key for Franchise Network Success

To quote a figurehead of strong business behaviours, Khloe Kardashian recently stated, “It’s all about consistency.” I couldn’t agree more. Looking across the franchise landscape, consistency is a theme that runs through many of the largest and highest performing networks. Strong branding controls, templated processes, and precise methods of execution allow franchise groups to control their delivery of goods and services. Yet, this control can easily be lost beyond that.

Seldom do franchisees join a network with a passion for back-office processes.

Even more seldom does a new franchisee, left to their own devices, replicate the structure of other network members.

But a successful franchise network does not let this situation play out across their business. Doing so can result in harmful flow-on effects such as inefficient processes and inconsistent data, leaving both the franchisee and franchisor not only exhausted but exposed to huge business risks.

Using an outsourced bookkeeping service like Visory is one way to enable franchise groups to roll out consistent back-office structures and processes that leave all parties involved with a much stronger foothold for continued growth.

The Right Tools for the Job

If individual franchisees are left to source and implement their own back-office systems, they are not always able to make decisions from a position of experience or expertise. This is not only time-consuming but has the potential to be enormously costly to the franchise group if the wrong decision is made.

Providing guidance and preferred providers for your network can streamline this process saving each new site or group member the lengthy process of researching, comparing, and negotiating deals for their chosen software.

Overlay the potential time saved from supplier negotiations at a group level, the best practice processes enabled by the right technology, and an on-demand support system to implement all required technology swiftly for new members, and you start to see the benefits balloon for your network.

As group controllers, you aren’t left with the short straw for your efforts either. Having preferred suppliers across your group gives you access to a consistent technology suite, which means you can offer ongoing support to your network whilst also reaping the rewards of standardised data feeds and integrations. This opens the door to heightened management reporting, access to groupwide data for decisions, and benchmarking across your network.

Team Blueprints for Success

Delivery of goods or services within your network will require human capital in some capacity. Hiring, training, management, payroll, and ongoing performance monitoring are all time-consuming tasks.

Many larger franchise groups have addressed such dealings by providing groupwide support or resources at varying levels with varying success.

Without a structured and systemic approach, new franchise members will either take on the responsibility of managing their back-office personally, manage it internally or look externally for assistance. But you can predict these three options each come with its own drawbacks and impact.

• 1. Personally managed: The owner’s time is sunk into completing back-office work, lack of scale due to workload constraints, and absence of oversight or quality controls.
• 2. Internally managed: Increased human resource requirements and investment, siloed capabilities, key person risk.
• 3. Externally managed: Franchise data security, additional relationships outside of group controller’s knowledge.

Many of these impacts can be mitigated with preferred back-office support options. Owners are released from completing back-office tasks, human capital requirements are managed and scaled efficiently, and work deliverables are already scoped and agreed to for new members or sites.

At Visory, our scalable back-office engagements are developed around this concept. Delivering best practice back-office support for entire networks, enabled through a digital platform for improved efficiencies and group oversight.

Accounts Aren’t to Be Overlooked

The structure of your financial accounts is often overlooked by franchise groups, but it is one of the most impactful areas for getting consistency right.

A good example is a Chart of Accounts (CoA). Advising a consistent CoA structure enables Group Controllers to be able to guide individual sites on leading indicators observed through consistent reporting. This unlocks and enhances benchmarking capabilities and allows back-office management to be standardised across the group for efficiency and reduced costs.

If we have not mentioned it enough, consistency is key – importantly, throughout your back-office processes. Although it may feel overwhelming or uninteresting, without a structure in place it only becomes more inefficient and unmanageable. We have a tonne of experience at Visory providing scalable resources to manage your franchise growth and provide you the knowledge, tools, and support to create the consistent back-office processes you need so you can focus on the delivery of your goods and services.