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Don’t Keep It All In Your Head – Why Business Systems Matter For Franchising

A business is successful because it has a solid system in place. There’s a magic formula that brings all pieces together and ensures the entire system works smoothly. The business system includes everything from the operations procedure to secret recipes so it encompasses everything you do to run your venture successfully. The business system is the core of every franchise model and without a well-planned and established one, your business won’t succeed.

What Kind of Systems Does a Good Business Have?

A great business system is designed to achieve a certain set of goals within a particular timeline. For example, McDonalds will have a business system to create burgers with the same taste, ingredients, and sizes consistently, day-in and day-out. A typical business will have several systems in place and that includes:

• Inventory Management
• Operations
• Shipping
• Accounting
• Training
• Customer Service
• Hiring and Recruitment
• Sales Conversions
• Purchasing

As you can see, there’s a system for every aspect of the business. This ensures everything happens on time and in the right order. This level of organisation is absolutely vital in franchises because they rely on the replication model.

Business Systems and Franchising – What’s the Connection?

Franchises are successful because they rely on familiarity and consistency. You’ll have the same experience in the Sydney branch of a franchise as you would in the Canberra branch. This consistency can only be achieved if you have well-planned business systems in place. If the systems that work are locked in your mind and not committed to paper, you won’t be able to teach the processes to your franchisees and that would hamper the process.

Before you start your franchise, you should take a close look at the business systems in all aspects of your venture. Make a note of what works and what doesn’t and pen down a plan that will get you the best results as quickly as possible. You should then spend some time perfecting the systems and testing them in real life applications.

Once you’re certain you have something that works for one branch, you need to figure out if it can be replicated across multiple branches. Successful business systems have the following traits:

• They’re customer-oriented and will include things that please the customer in all branches.
• Every system has a leader or someone who’s responsible for the entire process. They’ll make sure it runs smoothly and all problems are addressed.
• Every business system should have one primary purpose. This will help keep things simple and ensure your business is lean and efficient.
• The system should also be the most expedient and efficient way to achieve a goal. You need to cut out any added processes, bottlenecks, and waste, as that would minimise your expenses and make your business more productive.
• You should also have a feedback and evaluation system in place to keep track of everything and identify any jabs or flaws.

Your system should also be flexible enough to adjust to local market conditions and requirements. Once you have good systems in place, all you need to go is train your franchisees well and make sure they know how to implement them in different branches.

If you want to know more about business systems in franchising, or want some advice, feel free to get in touch with us at The Franchise Institute. You can call us on 1300 855 435 or fill in this contact us form and we’ll reply as soon as we can.

Thanks for reading,
The Franchise Institute Team
1300 855 435