CAN YOU REALLY USE AN OFF THE SHELF TEMPLATES SYSTEM TO DEVELOP A FRANCHISE?

If you look at the full spectrum of help and advice out there to help you franchise your business, it is wide and varied. At one end of the scale you have DIY templates that are designed to be adapted to suit your own business. At the other end of the scale are professional franchise development consultants who can do the work for you, drive the process and see the project through to completion. Each appproach has its merits and the main appeal of the DIY approach is of course it's low cost. But can you really take a bunch of standard templates and turn them into the sort of documentation you need for successful franchising? Well, there is more than one point to consider here: Firstly, it takes more than documentation to develop a robust model for successful franchising and this is a subject I will return to another time. Secondly, it dependds on the quality of the templates themselves. If they are just standard documents with the company name removed and lacking any sort of guidance they could be next to useless. Particular warning should be given here about franchise agreement templates. There is no such thing as a standard franchise agreement. Quite apart from regular changes to the law and best practice, how can a franchise agreement for a sit down restuarant be the same as one for a garden services franchise? Thirdly, it depends on the level of knowledge and experience you have in franchising. Franchising is a business discipline all of it's own which can only be learnt through experience of working in the franchise industry. And no, extensive business experience outside of franchising will not prepare you to either develop or manage a franchise system, even though you think it may. Lastly, do you really have the time and energy to be developing a franchise as well as running your own business? The ideal solution is a franchise templates package that is of high quality, covers all of the vital areas, gives comprehensive guidance and can be adapted to all franchise types. It should also guide you through developing the content of a franchise agreement and then point you towards a franchise industry specialist lawyer to complete the task and ensure that you have a robust and water tight franchise agreement. Of course, you won't really know if you can do all of this unless you try - and that's the gamlbe. Whether to take the chance on buying an off the shelf templates package and finding out it's not the right route for you. In an ideal world there will be a franchise advsior out there that will let you try their franchise templates package and if it doesn't work for you, refund your money and provide a full consultancy service to help you see the project through.

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