The Franchise

One of the strategies that franchises often employ to maintain the integrity of the franchise system and insure control and consistency throughout the franchise company is to use a standardized confidential operations manual. Yet, we all know that the only thing that is constant use change. This is why the confidential operations manual in any franchisor company must be constantly updated. But, how do you know if all the franchisees have been diligent in updating their manual, so that everyone is doing everything the same way?

Many franchisors today put the manuals online in a company intranet system and the company itself makes the changes. This is a good strategy, however opens the door to downloadable theft of proprietary information. In our company we decided to use paper manuals, in binders, which were extremely hard to copy. To insure that our franchisees updated their manual, we decided to add a clause into our franchise agreements and make them agree prior to the commencement of their franchise to above all else keep the confidential operations manual up-to-date;

3.12 Confidential Operations Manual

3.12.1 Updating Manual And System