24 Sep Business Plan Intro
Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account  ‘Enterprise’ Account
Introduction
The Business Planning module allows Franchisees to build and maintain a business plan within FranchiZeManager. It is designed to be simple and fast to use for franchisees and franchisors. It is based on the “Balanced Scorecard” approach to business planning, which is described in detail below in Section 2.
As a franchisor the benefit of this module is that you get full transparency over the business plans of your franchisees. You can see who does and does not have a plan, as well as if the plans are up to date. And perhaps most importantly it provides a medium for you to discuss planning with your franchisees. It gives you a structured methodology to review business performance allowing you and your franchisees to reach agreement on a plan of action.
The “Balanced Scorecard” Approach to Business Planning
The format of the business plan is based loosely on the strategic planning and management methodology called “Balanced Scorecard” that was originally developed in the early 1990’s by Dr. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton. It has been continually refined and successfully used and recognised by leading companies worldwide.
One of the central philosophies of the balanced scorecard is that your business plan should not be a “passive document”, it should not be something that is written and then left in the bottom drawer and never referred to again. Rather the business plan is an “active document” that is updated regularly and adjusted, it clearly lists the goals and measures of the business and becomes the “marching orders” for the franchisee on a monthly and even weekly basis.
It also provides a framework that not only provides performance measurements, but helps franchisees identify what should be done and how success will be measured. So in summary the Business Planning module enables franchisees to clarify and document their own localised strategy and then translate it into a firm action plan.
The structure of the plan is shown in the diagram below:
