Franchise organisations need to be well managed and have a strong structure to operate successfully. As a franchisee is purchasing the process and the branding as much as they are a territory. To facilitate this a Franchisor needs to offer franchise management systems, in its most basic form this can be a printed ‘Operations Manual’. Geven that by its very nature the Franchisees are remote from the Franchisor, the use of online tools and the Internet is a natural fit for franchise management systems. This also ranges in complexity from shared online text documents and spreadsheets at one end, to bought in systems and to bespoke designed and built systems at the other end.
The more bespoke a system is, the harder changing it is, so it is important that before considering a bespoke system the processes you are automating (Business Process Automation) are well tested and robust. This can (in a well designed system) make the management and enforcement of processes significantly easier to manage for the Franchisor, and easier to understand and operate for the Franchisee.