ADVICE FOR FRANCHISORS Allocating the plan’s
responsibilities ByBrian Duckett, The Franchising Centre
I
f you are following this series of articles closely, you will remember we are at the stage where we have started to establish a mission statement for the business and have agreed some long term SMART objectives. We must now allocate some responsibility for achieving these objectives and break them down into easy steps. Firstly, it is important to be clear
about who owns each objective and is responsible for its achievement. Overall responsibility of course rests with the managing director, chief executive, general manager, proprietor or whatever you call the person at the top. It is their job to ensure that there is a plan, even if they use others to assist in its development and implementation, and that the plan is clearly communicated throughout the organisation. Within the plan, each step, large or small, must belong to someone. Most businesses have four main
business streams, i.e. marketing, operations, finance, and people. The larger businesses have a director or head of department responsible for each of them. Smaller businesses may have one person doing the lot. No matter, all need attention and should be considered in the plan. Let’s take marketing as our example
and say the marketing director is responsible for developing the products or services, making sure the right people know about them and are aware of how to buy them. The objective is to increase market share to eight per cent by December. There will be a number of strategies towards this, some of which could include:-
● Establish and implement a process for accurate measurement of market share.
● Develop and implement new marketing campaign for existing products.
● Increase the number of outlets by five during the year. Each strategy should have its own
● Brian Duckett is chairman of the Franchising Centre, the leading consultancy, training and staff recruitment group. It advises prospective and existing franchisors domestically and internationally, both outbound and inbound, and its Franchise Training Centre assists the BFA in running the QFP qualification for franchise professionals.
page, and all the action steps for one strategy should be contained on one page. Each step should have columns for
who is responsible, when it will be done by, and what it is likely to cost. Before moving to this level of detail though it is important that the directors share their parts of the plan with each other, or they may each be going off on different tracks, chasing objectives which contradict each other, or using three times as much resource as is available. At first the process may seem daunting and appear to be no more than a paper-generating exercise, and so it is if the follow-up is not done properly. There is no point spending time on writing out the plan if it is not then reviewed on a regular basis. Having a date for the completion of each step means you only need to review the current time-sensitive ones, and knowing who is responsible for each large step and the small ones within it, means only those people need to get involved. A quick weekly discussion, even over the phone, should do it. A top-level review then only needs doing about three or four times a year, followed by an annual session to update and roll ahead. Next time we’ll look at how individuals can be helped to fulfil their part of the process.
After all, if everyone is doing
everything they should be doing we ought to end up with a successful business.
i 01904 561 598
www.thefranchisingcentre.com
oven cleaning franchise. Its processes are environmentally-friendly and use bio- degradable cleaners. Whitaker is seen here with Keith Archer, Ovenu’s franchisee at Andover.
i T. 01325 251 455
www.ovenufranchise.co.uk
Bluebird Care A franchise that provides care at home, Bluebird Care, is this year sponsoring the referees of the Royal Navy Football
Ovenu Sarah Whitaker, a demonstrator of Aga- Rayburn cookers and cookery author, recommends Aga owners to have their cookers cleaned by Ovenu, the domestic
Association by helping to fund their training kit. The firm’s head office at Petersfield is near Portsmouth, the home of the Navy. Bluebird Care, founded by Paul and Lisa Tarsey, has over 130 offices. Simon Dalziel is franchise director.
Café2U David Downie has become chairman of the UK operation of Café2U, the mobile coffee franchise. An Australian system, Café2U claims to be the world’s largest mobile coffee franchise with 100 vans in Australia and more than 50 in the UK and Ireland.
April/May 2012
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