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FEATURES 10 Top Reasons to Add a Franchise Intranet to Your Communication Plan want one by the time you read Reason No. 10. (Hint: Generate New Business) BY EARL PINSKY Before we get to the top 10 reasons to add a franchise intranet to your communication plan, let’s define what a franchise intranet is. It’s basically a cloud-based set of software tools used to facilitate communication and provide a valuable resource for franchisees. A well-rounded franchise intranet should offer information, support, a sense of community and more while helping to reduce costs as well as ensure compliance with corporate objectives and branding. It is supportive, rather than intrusive, and should make franchisees feel that they are contributing to their business and to the company as a whole. Most franchise intranets fulfill basic franchise needs through the provision of applications designed specifically for the market. These applications typically include document repositories for marketing and operational materials; a company news or bulletin application; support directories to reduce repetitive head office communications; an events calendar; message boards to facilitate franchisee to franchisee interaction; a content management system to create new intranet sections and pages; and user management modules to measure franchisee logins and activity within the intranet. Many companies marketing franchise intranets also sell additional applications or modules that provide more capabilities and value to their franchisees as they streamline other daily activities. These applications can include website and ad builders, franchisee lead generators and related CRM components, task lists, sales/royalty reporting (often with EFT capabilities), store-opening managers, and training and testing modules. Some franchise intranet companies will let you purchase these additional applications on an as-needed basis to help you keep your costs in line. Now that you know what a franchise intranet is, let’s look at the top 10 reasons to add a franchise intranet to your communication plan. 1. FACILITATE FREQUENT COMMUNICATIONS The best franchisees are informed, engaged and educated. A franchise intranet should contain all the documents, training and support required by a franchisee to help them run their business successfully. Whether you have five franchisees or 500, you can’t visit them all often enough or offer the support they need on a daily basis through email or phone calls. That’s impractical and too costly; however, you can use a franchise intranet to easily communicate with your franchisees as often as you wish. 2. KEEP IT CURRENT There’s nothing worse than a franchisee referencing an old document, promoting an expired sale, or using branding that is out of date. Everything in your franchise intranet should be as current as possible and franchisees should be trained to look to the intranet when they need an operations manual, a marketing piece, a corporate logo or ad, or any other company image. This will keep everyone on the same page as well as promoting compliance and reducing potential legal issues. (Continued on page 20) 18 FRANCHISING WORLD NOVEMBER 2015
FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU TURKEY TOWN "BITE ME" -Tommy Turkey Cockrell Enovation now offers BRANDING, CREATIVE SERVICES, AND PRINTING ON DEMAND for your marketing program. And to demonstrate our skills, we created a whole new franchise: Turkey Town. It’s fake, of course. But the benefits you’ll get from choosing Cockrell Enovation are very real. Call today and let’s talk turkey. 218 W Broadway Ave, Fort Worth, TX 76104 | (817) 336-0571 | www.cockrellenovation.com
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