As a multi-site or franchise owner, managing your business can be an overwhelming task. With multiple locations, staff and customers, you’re constantly juggling (often conflicting) priorities. However, with a robust strategic approach, you can effectively manage and reap the benefits of a successful business. Here are five tips to help with the day-to-day and long-term management of your franchise or multi-site business.

Streamline Operations

Establish Clear + Attainable Goals

This may seem like a simple notion, but is often much harder to execute in practice. Unlike single-site businesses, the goals of a multi-site or franchise business can often be in direct conflict with one another. For example, you may want to grow sales around an already established location but also break into new territories by opening new sites. These two objectives, attempted simultaneously, will be constantly competing for resources – marketing, capital, sales, inventory, staffing, and your time, to name a few.

Defining a clear outcome for success and setting an appropriate timeline is essential to ensuring the sustainability of the business and the individual sites within it. A simple approach is to set a handful of SMART goals for the business as a whole, and for each of the individual sites. Keeping in mind that every one of these goals must align to create synergy and a higher probability of success. For example, for each site to reach its goal of effectively growing revenue by 10-15% over 12 months, the primary business goal may be to invest in marketing to establish the brand as an expert leader within a given area.

As a quick refresher, SMART goals refer to those that are:

• Specific – Setting very specific and narrow goals will assist in more effective planning and strategy
• Measurable – Define what evidence will demonstrate improvement and eventually success
• Attainable – Can you reasonably expect to achieve this goal within a certain timeframe
• Relevant – The goal should align with your business values and long-term objectives
• Timed – Set an ambitious but realistic end-date to achieve by, this includes all task due dates on the way to goal fulfillment.



Utilise Real-Time Data to Make Informed Decisions

As the owner / manager of a multi-site or franchise, you’ll need to be data-driven in your day-to-day decision-making. You’ll also need to use data to make important longer term business decisions, such as when to expand into new geographies.

Whether it comes to marketing, accounting and financial management, product development or staffing, your business will need to have access to quality real-time data. And have the understanding and capability to interpret and execute on it.

It’s also a good idea to support solid quantitative data with sound qualitative analysis and to ensure the two are synchronous. Seeking feedback from staff, customers and other stakeholders will offer you a more well-rounded perspective of how your business is performing across different areas. Strengthening your ability to make apt business decisions, and grow and scale more effectively.



Develop Strong Teams

People can be the biggest asset in your business, but are a burgeoning liability if you get the wrong ones. Within your franchise or multi-site business, you’re likely responsible for managing multiple teams. Plus, you may also be responsible for any associated hiring, training and coaching of these teams and their members across all areas of your business.

Having systems and processes that help drive and develop the internal culture will ultimately be the tailwind or ceiling to your long-term success. But remember, culture is more than just Friday afternoon drinks and a foosball table in the break room. People need to feel valued, understand what’s expected of them and how their role contributes to the broader business objectives, be given some level of autonomy, have job security and adequate compensation for their effort – and not just financial compensation either. Your job as a leader is to facilitate this culture as best you can and seek support where you’re met with challenges.



To help build strong teams within your franchise or multi-site, it may be worthwhile outsourcing any non-core business functions such as IT and security, accounting, marketing and advertising. Not only will this save you money by only paying for what you need as you need it in these areas, but it will also allow you to focus on developing your team around your core offering. Making for a more resilient and scalable business.

Monitor Performance Consistently

As the saying goes, what gets measured get managed. And no truer words have been spoken when it comes to running a multi-site or franchise business. You will consistently need to monitor and manage performance across all areas. This again illustrates the importance of real-time and accurate data for sales, marketing and all of your accounting and financial management.

In the early days, before your business grew, this could simply involve tracking key metrics, implementing small changes and monitoring for improvement to help drive incremental growth. As your business expands into new markets and/or territories, there are more detailed benchmarking and KPI management requirements. But none of this is possible without structured data and performance monitoring processes built into your business. So, wherever you are in the evolution of your franchise or multi-site business, detailed and accurate data and performance monitoring should be a high priority.

By employing some or all of these strategies, you will be able to build a more efficient and profitable business. One that runs and scales independently of you. If you’re currently seeking to invest in a multi-site or franchise business, these are also all great characteristics to look for in your prospective candidates.

If you’d like support in implementing strong accounting and financial management processes to help deliver consistent, accurate and real-time data; streamline operating procedures; assist in strategic goal setting; and free up valuable time to work on the important core elements of your business, talk to Aretex today. We provide affordable, outsourced bookkeeping and operational accounting solutions to meet the needs of growing franchises and multi-sites.