Everything starts with the franchise manual and your SOP, Standard Operating Procedures. If it’s mismanaged, you’re putting your business at immediate risk of generating dissatisfied customers. Done right, it will allow you to own and copyright your concept, know-how and trade secrets. If furthermore cements the contractual obligations you task each franchisee to uphold.

The SOP manual not only reinforces the terms of the franchise agreement – it also enables you to secure quality standards, enforce what’s mandatory and drive consistency across your network. It also provides you with a tool for upcoming audits, continuous monitoring and control.

To grow, you can’t afford gambling with know-how and established procedures
To grow seamlessly, no employee should be left behind
Having a franchise manual and SOP is one thing. But your manuals are only as good as the way you communicate them. A successful franchise can only deliver a fully consistent experience to its customers, if there are clear guidelines, processes and job instructions to follow. Your franchisees carry the responsibility to deliver your Brand to the customer – so make sure they are given the best possible conditions.

A Predictable Customer Experience is crucial in todays fierce competition
A number of franchises that fail in delivering predictable and consistent customer experiences, do so because of a lack of access to knowledge about job procedures, mandatory business practices and on-going support. Many of the leading franchise businesses have abandoned the traditional franchise manual and moved all know-how and operational procedures to the cloud. Not only does this make updating easier across the entire user base. For the user, it also provides with a more logical way of looking things up, search for and understand what’s expected to successfully do a good job.

The Chainformation Franchise Operations platform allows for digital handbooks and Standard Operating Procedures being available on mobile devices. Governed by Role based access in multiple levels. Add to that integrated digital checklistst and push notifications, task management in real time, and you have a powerful infrastructure to drive quality and compliance across all locations in the network. 
Deviations and non-compliance can be detected and reported in real time up the chain of command. No paper, manual work or emails. Just fast reports and dashboards.  

Conclusion
Multi-unit franchise networks can only perform consistently and in line with customer expectations if the SOP and collective know-how is shared top-down and across. Your manuals and compliance documents should be available at the flick of a thumb, be instantly searchable and available across all devices – not tucked away in the back-office or lost on a internal server or stale SharePoint intranet. 

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Anders Hall is one of the founders and senior partner of Chainformation. Chainformation delivers digital tools and systems for operational support, internal communication and quality management for franchises and multi-site operators.