It is paramount to continually seek the best and most efficient systems in any business to service the customers, beat the competition and make money. In franchising it is most important to have brainstorming sessions to keep your team bleeding edge. But to do this you must ask the right question when looking to streamline; "What ways can we make our teams more efficient; where can we cut waste and how can we leverage this to streamline our franchise system?”

During a brainstorming a weeklong forum based online session we asked these questions and got back some unique answers. Here is one of the ideas that came through on a Sunday even;

"Another streamlining idea in the current market of virtual solutions would be to have a supplier offer centralized bookkeeping solutions. Many large companies have moved to this type of system and I am sure for many new small business owners this is a concern. Car Wash Guys [our company brand name] need to be able to focus on delivering service and not have to worrying about whether or not taxes are paid, invoices are sent out, etc. Once again, if many franchisees would take advantage of this offering it would be attractive to a solution provider. Strength lies in numbers and the more people that took advantage of this the more competitive the pricing could be structured. This should not need to be an expensive solution.”

Indeed the franchisee was most likely sitting at home on a Sunday doing paperwork thinking to himself, I want more quality of life, isn't there some way to fix this dilemma? Indeed there was and we implemented this in June of

2000. This one week online brainstorming session delivered another very interesting comment, which was partially implemented in July of 2000. When he stated;

"Managing growth will always be a concern, however, as the number of franchisees continues to sore there should be some clear indicators that reflect when it is time to add people and/or equipment. Much like inventory control and order points. You may already have all this information. I know for me it will be a question I will have and will be looking to you and other franchisees to help me answer this question.”

Indeed our company did have a strategic plan when to provide guidance for expansion, but we did not have it readily available in our Intranet System. Yet, once we considered this we developed a decision matrix and target points. It helped in many ways in fact some franchisees used it as a their goals for the year and were able to get there faster because we made all this available and allow for smoother transitions as they expanded their companies. Think on this in 2006.

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