The Flywheel Group

Is creating an emotional bond or emotional engagement really what you’re after when working with prospective candidates who are interested in your franchise? If your job function is in franchise sales you’ll probably say “Yes”. If you’re a CEO you’re likely thinking “No?”. The nature of the franchisor-franchisee relationship is complex and must begin with a proper alignment of expectations if you want to achieve long-term viability.

Quite often we speak with franchising executives about the challenges they’re facing. During these conversations, one subject that is commonly broached is the challenge surrounding franchise sales/development. Many times what the organization’s leadership is explaining to us are symptoms of a problem, but they’re looking for a solution that only treats this symptom. The reality […]

Improving internal systems, methods and support to really help existing franchises achieve greater profit and stability is more important than ever. Franchise flywheel represents the type of tools ZOR’s should be adopting to put an emphasis on improving core capabilities until the damper on growth passes.

Bottom line is the SOP is not going to likely work for most franchise systems given the degree of change going on. If you are a manager, executive or franchisee, how aware are you of these pressures and do you concur with the analysis that your business models are feeling significant and greater pressures requiring fundamental change ?

I take for granted that many people understand what “Cloud Computing” is. Speaking at different events and talking with clients in franchising and other industries, I’ve become more aware that many don’t truly understand what the term “Cloud Computing” means.

With the surge in more affordable and flexible cloud based information systems, like salesforce.com, many intelligent organizations are evaluating changing their information systems. This is particularly true for franchise organizations, whose unique business models offer an opportunity to improve productivity significantly via the wise adoption of well crafted solutions like franchiseflywheel.com .

Having consulted with a variety of franchise executive, many whom have been touted in industry rags as being franchise gurus, I can say that few possess deep understanding of their own franchise system let alone the ability to ascertain the workings of another they are thinking of acquiring. Therefore, to the extent consolidations continue as a strategy reflective of a maturing franchise marketplace, folks should remain highly skeptical of mergers as a means to realize efficiencies that create value.

For franchisees and franchisors obtaining necessary capital is becoming an increasing challenge which is impeding growth. Unfortunately, finance experts think the ongoing cash crunch will continue to limit opportunities for some time. Restrictions on available capital will reward those franchise systems that adopt intelligent management and systems which enable them to improve core operations so […]

The results of the study indicate that franchise systems founded between 1981 and 1983, which are structured to economize on agency costs, are more likely to survive than franchise systems which are not structured to economize on agency costs. This finding is important because the failure rate of franchise systems is high, with over 72 percent of the new franchise systems in the sample ceasing to franchise by 1995.

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” -Albert Einstein In my previous post, titled “Designing a Process for Awarding Franchises – Part 1: Leadership”, I looked at the notion of how designing a process of awarding franchises has to start with […]