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Determining the Contents of a Franchise Operations Manual

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A well-written, consistently followed operations manual will help you beat the odds and join the 20 percent of small business start-ups that are still around after five years.

In an operations manual, everything about your business is standardized and documented. It becomes a toolkit for replicating what you do. It can become your training textbook, saving you countless hours and helping people with different strengths and skill levels to perform tasks in the same way. Clients can also be assured of a consistent experience.

If you intend to franchise, documenting everything in an operations manual is essential. Mike Cotsworth of Car Connections Ltd. is planning to franchise his business soon. “Having a formalized system for franchisees to follow will prevent them from taking short cuts or dreaming up their own ways of doing things — which may dilute or derail a proven way of doing something,” he explains. “This has forced me to examine and define what the best steps are and write them down. Before doing this, I had it all in my head, so I worked by habit and experience. Now it’s being formalized into specific steps that someone else can follow.”

If your business is currently just you, clearly documented procedures are valuable. Carol Johnson, The BookStormer, helps authors bring their book ideas to fruition. “I documented each process in my work,” she told us. “I did this for anyone else I might train in the future, but having this process in place also lets me fine-tune it as I go. I can easily use it to meet each author’s specific needs. The biggest challenge for me was just sitting down and doing it.”

Write Your Manual

“When writing, you must think of your audience and set the tone accordingly,” Craig Dietz of Special Ops, LLC, advises. “Don’t use legalese, make it readable and use practical, easy-to-understand language. Know your topics and the people you’re writing to.”

Step One: Know Where You’re Going

Consider where you ultimately want to take the business, and keep this in mind as you write.

Step Two: Get Organized

Create an organization chart for your company. Draw boxes for each major area of responsibility. This offers a visual overview of the business that is easy to see at a glance.

Step Three: Start Writing

Set up a file on your computer or use a three-ring binder or notebook for your first draft. Assign a different section for each aspect of the business, then:

o Outline each section

o Develop a job description for the person responsible

o List all necessary tasks

o Write down exactly what is involved for each task

o Spell out step-by-step instructions and a sequence to follow for each task

Use pictures, diagrams or charts to illustrate or clarify your points.

As you write, think about all the things that could possibly go wrong, list these and build in action steps to correct them.

Step Four: Get Feedback

Ask several others with similar experience and backgrounds to those of your reader to look over the document and give you feedback. Find out if there were steps you missed, details you forgot to mention, or words and concepts they didn’t easily understand.

Step Five: Polish It

Write your second draft. If the manual is for others to use, consider hiring a professional editor.

Step Six: Schedule Regular Reviews

Set times, perhaps once a year, to regularly review and update your manual. If you have added new products, services or markets, or made any changes in the way you do things, this information should be included.

Don’t wait until the business is mature to write your manual. Begin now. If you can’t devote a large block of time, allocate several hours each week to the project. If you’re consistent, you will soon have it completed and be ready to grow a healthy, profitable business. You will also be able to enjoy a vacation, knowing that those left in charge are able to do a first-rate job of running the business while you’re gone.

Determining the Contents of a Franchise Operations Manual

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Starting a business and establishing it to a good level is no easy task. But once it is done, next what? Wouldn’t you want that it should spread all over the region, the state and the country and even overseas Franchise Operations Manual? It isn’t possible to set up your own branches at all these places as the operation cost that you will incur would he high and involves many complexities. Then what is the technique that needs to be applied to achieve this? Franchising your business is the secret and sure shot formula for this successful venture.

Franchising refers to the right that a company gives to a selected set of enterprises to sell its products and services at various locations and outlets, within and outside the state and country. This method has picked up momentum in all sectors especially the retail stores and branded fast food companies. It is amazing that without their actual existence, they make their presence felt in the franchisees’ market.

There are many advantages to adopting this method. When you as a franchisor opt to franchise your business the first and foremost relaxing element is that you do not need to make any investment. This would be taken care of by the franchisee, who has to have a huge amount as initial investment. Secondly, local franchisors would help in expanding the market fast as would be thorough with the local market trend, the customers, their attitudes and the market capturing formula. No doubt the franchisor’s products and services are being expanded and sold at different places. But the real bonanza is that, over and above this sale profit, the franchisor gets handsome money as upfront fee when a franchisee is given the rights of franchise. The other double bonanza is that the franchisee also has to pay a royalty fee annually, till the period he enjoys the franchise benefits and acts as a franchisee.

But franchising isn’t that easy too. Many doubts and questions may arise regarding this. You need to make lot of assessments, calculations, study market trends of different places and choose the locations for opting for franchisors and then go for advertising. Once this is out, there will be numerous applications and once again you need to boggle your mind, whom to select, what to select, what criteria to be kept etc. How to plan it out? What should be the Franchisee fee? How to select a suitable Franchisor? What documents are required and how it is to be prepared and set? What would the agreement be like and how to prepare it? What system of operation is to be followed? What would be and should be the terms and conditions? You can get a detailed and complete guide on all these matters from franchisee manual which can be obtained from some reputed websites.

Franchise Operations Manual – Finding Ways to Understand Franchise …

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When an organization is in the process of expanding, it always looks for ways and means to minimize the incurring cost and maximize its profits and would surely opt for those options in which it has less complexity and hiccups. In earlier days of business the only system that was followed, was to open operations in different locations and set up their own offices and stores, make recruitments and manage staff by the technique of Franchise Operations Manual . Today, the trend of franchisee business has taken shape with a great enthuse and huge success. Well established companies can now set their footprints on unknown markets with the least headache and worries. No need to put in all your resources and extra resources for this as that will be taken care of by the franchisor who will be appointed for this purpose. All that you need to do is Franchise Your Business by selecting the right Franchisor and at the right locations.

But for this you need to know many things and be aware of the formalities that need to be followed. When you go for selecting a franchisor you have to know many details about the franchisor, his location, the market, its trend, how your company’s reputation would be etc. While going for franchising, there are many agreements and other documents that need to be prepared. The terms and conditions are to be laid down clearly. There needs to be some declarations that have to be made which would include details like the number of years in business, the details of existing franchisees, what is your proposed plan for expansion and diversification, and also certain financial information of the franchisor too. So prudence need to be adapted while making the declaration papers. Code of Conducts is to be laid down. The site of operation, the demographical limit etc need to be finalized. Detailed awareness of the company’s products, its specifications, its advantages etc. need to be well put in to the franchisor and proper training for operational personnel needs to be given by the franchisor. The franchisee has to give a fixed amount as fee to the franchisor and also pay royalty for using the franchisor company’s brand name, goodwill, etc. for his own profits. This amount needs to be determined. So also the commissions, marketing and advertisement fees and other such fees need to be decided.

Above all, there needs to be a clause on litigations, if any, that may arise. In case of termination of franchisee, what would be the mode of coming to terms? There also occurs many governmental interference and requires departmental clearance. Sometimes, you may seek for a consulting firm to take up the entire responsibility. In that case, searching a suitable firm is yet another tight rope walk.

Easy Steps to Write Your Franchise Operations Manual

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For technical writers that are hired to write franchise operations manuals, it can be an overwhelming task. Although the pay to produce such manuals can be substantial; unfortunately, it can also be a tremendous amount of work and a daunting project. The biggest key in writing franchise operations manual perhaps is getting organized. Franchise companies per se are quite complex animals meaning you will have your work cut out for you.

Likewise, the quality of the franchise manuals is extremely important to the success of the franchise organization. If they are done incorrectly it will cause problems that can lead to miscommunication which can lead to future litigation, or even problems with local, regional, and national regulatory agencies. They must be airtight. Easier said than done of course, especially considering that most franchise founders haven’t a clue as to what they actually need Franchise Agreement.

For technical writers that specialize in manual writing, you’ll know better than they will as to what is needed, still, they will insist on additional components they’d like to see in the manual. Rather, than getting upset with this, go with it, because franchising is a much different business model than a normal corporation with a ton of outlets, and layers of management.

The first thing I’d discuss with them is two sets of manuals. One set for the franchisees and one set for the franchisor’s staff, employees, and in the field area managers. The great thing about taking a writing gig to produce franchise manuals is that once you start, they are going to need you forever. Why, you ask?

Because franchisors grow fast, modify their business models a lot, and are in constant need of additional sections and training material Franchise Disclosure Document FDD. It’s also fun work once you get over your frustrations. Please consider all this, because as a retired franchisor, I can tell you, it is a very needed service in the industry.