Franchise Talk: 5 Things that Make

Franchising More Fun in the Philippines

With a population of over 101 million, a young, English speaking population and a central
geographic location that is just a three-hour plane ride to major ASEAN capitals, the
Philippines has become the franchise hub of Asia. Five things set the Philippines apart
when it comes to franchising: 
 
 
1. A young population
 The Philippines has one of the youngest populations in Asia, with a median age of 23
years old. About 62 percent of the population is at working age, placing the country at a
demographic ‘sweet spot’ and giving brands a large potential base of consumers. Over
33 million Filipinos are under 14 years old, which means concepts that target kids as well
as educational and enrichment franchises have a strong potential to tap this market.
 
 
2. 24/7 market
 With a growing Business Processing Outsourcing sector, the Philippines has a 24/7
market which has driven the growth of convenience stores, 24-hour food establishments
and service sectors that cater to them.
 
 
3. 10 million international Filipinos 
Around 10 percent of the population live and work internationally, and Overseas Filipino
Workers remit over $27 billion back to the Philippines every year. This creates a huge
market given a strong segment that is exposed to and seeks out international brands.
 
 

 
 
4. Well-developed franchise market
With over 1,500 franchise brands (35 percent foreign, 65 percent local), a diverse
franchise sector (44 percent food, 27 percent retail, 26 service, three percent education)
and an average of almost 100 outlets per franchisor, the Philippines is one of the most
developed franchise markets in Asia.
 
 
5. Highest number of Certified Franchise Executives (CFE) in Asia
 The CFE is a mark of excellence & professionalism in franchising and with the
Philippines investing in constant education, it now has the highest number of CFEs in
Asia, giving people a large potential franchise workforce for both Philippine and Asian
expansion. This has led to the rise of many international franchise brands using the
Philippines as a regional hub for both franchising and training.
 
 
Franchising in the country enjoys a 90-percent success rate, thanks to an industry well
supported by an ecosystem of services. Banks provide both franchisors and franchisees
loans, the government provides training and support for SMEs and an established
Philippine Franchise Association that guides members to abide by fair franchising
standards. In addition, international franchise consultants, lawyers and franchise-
matching companies are available to assist foreign brands that plan to enter the
Philippines or expand across the region.
 
With the ASEAN Economic Community in full swing, and a rapidly integrating region, the
time to expand into Asia is now, and the Philippines can serve as a perfect hub for
regional expansion.
 
 
*****
 
 
Francorp helps businesses scale up through franchising by helping entrepreneurs create
detailed operations manuals, professional business plans, franchise legal agreements
and conducting regular How to Franchise Your Business Seminars.  Find out
more here or at (02) 638-3149, (+63917) 835.55.30, email info@francorp.com.ph, or
visit francorp.com.ph. 
 
Chris is the Chief Marketing Officer of Francorp Philippines; president of U-Franchise
Sales & Management; and chairperson and director for special projects, ASEAN
integration-Philippine Franchise Association
 
10 Ways to market Your Franchise
Franchising is a marketing and sales business, it takes a focused effort to build your
franchise sales pipeline and establish your franchise network. These tips should help
you get started when you first franchise your business:
1. Build your online presence online. Today’s market for everything is transitioning
to online. Amazon and Netflix aren’t the only ones who are transitioning entirely to
online business, the entire world has gone online. Find ways to add to your presence
and make the investment. Add your franchise and your brand to as many listing sites
as you can find, do it professionally and spend the time to get your brand in front of
people who are already looking for a business.
2. Work Social Media. Everyone’s talking so much about social media that I’m sick
of it. That is….sick that I didn’t invest in Facebook when everyone else did. Social
media is here to stay and it is part of our lives, business, everything. You need
someone on your team who is driving traffic, formulating your message and pushing
your franchise brand through social media. It is easy to mess this up with corny, ill-
prepared social media messages, it needs to be done right or you risk looking like an
MLM.
3. Redo Your Marketing Materials. Trust me, people can tell you built your
brochure on a word document with stock images. Just because you PDF’d the
presentation doesn’t mean that it looks professional. Put the time and money into a
presentation that is well thought out, professionally done and will actually warrant
someone calling you back or responding to your email follow up. Everyone is visual
today, you need a good graphic designer who can present the franchise the right way.
4. Be Content Savvy(practical knowledge and ability). The web is becoming more
competitive for everything, particularly in the franchise space. You need to be a
thought leader in your market. If you sell shoes, find something to write about shoes
every week, make it engaging, interesting and spend the time coming up with thought
provoking ideas that will build your followership. Haven’t you heard the saying,
“write about it and they will come”?
5. Understand the Conversion. Marketing is a multi-step process, don’t be good at
getting the person’s attention and bad and getting them to contact you. You are
wasting your time on the prospecting part of marketing if people come to your site
 and don’t give you their contact information. Build tools that are compelling, offer
something to the visitor and give them a reason to want to get to know you.
6. Redo your Franchise Logo. Someone said this to me the other day and it was like a
brick hitting me in the chest. My pride was hurt, but after looking at it, the comment
hit home. I bet the same is true for you, have a professional come up with something
that means something and says something about your brand, not a 99Designs contest
winner you didn’t put thought into.
7. Understand how Critical a Franchisee Is. Franchisees deserve to criticize the
brand they are about to invest in, that’s their right when they are the one making the
investment. Read through your website, find the spelling errors, know your
presentation thoroughly enough to not lose a deal because you spelled “freind” wrong
on your brochure.
8. Leverage your Connections.(ability to influence situation or people) The largest
single category of franchise sales takes place through referrals (38%). This may seem
obvious for the large franchise brand that is driving referrals in by the hundreds
because they have locations on every street corner, but you would be amazed how
many times your vendors, friends, relatives, associates and others you know will be
the early on franchise investors in new franchise systems as well. Talk to people and
present to them, it’s worth the time even if you feel embarrassed trying to sell your
buddy a franchise.
9. Go to Franchise Events. Franchise tradeshows and exhibitions can be expensive to
take a booth out and exhibit your brand, but you can always go and attend these
events. The cost typically is very reasonable, just time and effort. The people at these
shows, events and networking opportunities can probably help you either find a
franchisee or they might actually be the franchisee.
10. Work with Franchise Brokers. Particularly when you are early on in your
franchise system’s growth, you need all the help you can get from those who are
willing to work on a commission basis with you. Franchise Brokers spend their own
money to generate leads for you. Yes, you should pay 50% plus commissions if you
are a newer franchise, it makes all the sense in the world, win with royalties and
franchise validation.

Franchise brokers are hired by franchise companies to sell you a franchise. They are paid
commission only when you buy a franchise from one of their clients.

5 Ways Technology Can Help

Grow your Franchise
Business
By Staff Writer
Posted: May 21st, 2015
With technology expanding at a very rapid pace, we find ourselves continually
accessing more and more new opportunities, especially in the business world. The
same can be said by franchisees, and there are numerous methods such companies
can use to grow exponentially and achieve successful results.

Using a CRM

Knowing the items sold by your franchisees and making sure that each location
maintains the same level of integrity and appeal are crucial, so the best thing you can
do here is use a CRM. With the help of a CRM program, you will have complete
control over the items or services that are purchased, so this makes a CRM crucial for
further improving the operations of a franchisee.
What is a CRM system? It’s a platform that connects your different departments, from
marketing to sales to customer service, and organizes their notes, activities, and metrics into
one cohesive system. Every user has easy, direct access to the real-time client data they
need. This not only allows for unparallelled coordination across teams and departments, but
also makes it possible for businesses to provide their customers with something extra
ordinary: personalize, one-to-one customer journeys. Compare that to the limited functionality
of old analogue and legacy systems, and you have something with the ability to revolutionize
the way you connect with customers

Barcode readers

With the help of a barcode reader, any franchisee can ensure that products are sold
the right way and no human errors will occur, whether those errors be in regards to
pricing, quantity of products sold, or any other number of factors. This means less loss
and more production value for the franchisee and the franchisor.

Security

Technology is also crucial when it comes to the security of franchisees. With the help
of video cameras and security systems, a franchisor can have complete control over
the area near any of its franchisee locations. With higher security, it's likely that more
customers will be attracted to the area. Investing in security equipment is crucial for
any franchisee and franchisor, and the results will certainly be impressive, to say the
least.

Communication

If there is one thing franchisors should focus on, it's communication. In the tech world,
great communication is very easy to achieve, allowing franchisees to work better and
provide a higher quality experience for customers. At the same time, franchises can
take full advantage of technologies such as VIP, for example, in order to further
improve the efficiency of their call center division. File-sharing can also be used to
improve communication and productivity, which brings yet another great advantage of
adding tech in the franchising world...

Accounting

Of course, accounting can be done the old-fashioned way, but it can take a long time
and human errors will happen, which might lead to losses and other similar issues.
Because of this, using technology for accounting practices is crucial. With accounting
software for mobile phones and tablets, performing finance-related actions is easier
and can happen right that second, allowing franchisors and franchisees to have a real-
time overview of their company's finances. 

The use of different charts, formulas and accounting principles using the power of
high-tech gadgets can help the whole organization in daily activities and more
extensive presentations and meetings.

These tools can easily be used to grow your business. If you want to take full
advantage of technology when it comes to your franchisee(s), check out our website,
as this is the best possible place to obtain relevant information about all your franchise

10 Food Franchise Technology Tools And

Solutions
Last Updated: Aug 2, 2019 by Joel Libava In Franchise 12
Today’s food franchise owners have a plethora of technology franchise tools
at their disposal. Some of them are designed to help the customer. Some are
designed to help the franchise business. Both are becoming popular with food
franchise owners. Combined, they are helping shape the way business is
done in what is a very competitive and sometimes grueling business.
Today’s technology can greatly help improve productivity, lower expenses,
increase profitability and assist with marketing programs for food franchise
owners.  What follows are some of the top technology franchise tools and
solutions available for franchisors and franchisees in the food sector.

Franchise Tools and Solutions

Nextstep Systems
This company has a solution called Mynextstep. This single-point restaurant
management tool allows labor, inventory and sales reporting to be performed
from one interface, system-wide. All the activities can be performed for one
location, or multiple locations, which sounds like a great fit for busy multi-unit
franchisees.

VST Inc.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that 1 in 6 Americans (or 48
million people) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die of food-borne
diseases every year.
In order to combat food-borne illnesses, the food service industry has put into
place “Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points,” (HACCP) and have
processes designed to not only ensure that food is cooked thoroughly, but is
also held at proper temperatures to prevent pathogens from getting in.
Very Smart Technologies (VST) provides integrated HACCP software
solutions for both PCs and PDAs to provide food franchises with the tools they
need to implement, monitor and control all seven of the HACCP critical control
points.

Hello Scheduling
This San Francisco-based company offers a software solution that helps food
franchise managers perform employee scheduling in a super-efficient manner.
Food franchise managers spend way too much time on employee scheduling.
With Hello Scheduling, managers can create their employee schedules in
one click, and communicate changes easily. The changes can be tracked
online by the employees on their computers, tablets or smartphones.
Employee no-shows are minimized, and managers can free up their time to
focus on revenue-generating activities for the franchise business.

ONOSYS
ONOSYS is the online and mobile ordering backbone for more chains than
any other online ordering company in the online ordering space.
Started by three Case Western Reserve University students, ONOSYS
provides a way for online customers to quickly place their orders. Not only
that, the software knows how to “intelligently” up-sell high-margin impulse
items based on what the customer has ordered in the past. There’s even a
way for customers to place future orders.

Stellar Restaurant Solutions

While take-out is a great revenue generator for food franchises, it can be
taxing on staffs who are trying to take care of the guests that are already in
the restaurant.
This company feels that the way to increase efficiency and sales is by having
a third-party handle take-out services and transactions.
Stellar Restaurant Solutions provides restaurants with their proprietary state-
of-the-art call center and order processing system.  Agents handle their clients
order processes to grow sales and provide guests with a wonderful “order to
food pick-up” experience.

Mindshare Technologies
The newest product from Mindshare Technologies is OpenTell.
Today’s consumers expect a great deal of transparency from businesses that
they frequent. OpenTell allows managers at each location to post responses
to customer reviews, so they can work transparently on resolving customer
issues.
And, when it comes to online reviews, reviews that are published by
customers and that are hosted by a third party are the most trusted sources of
information for consumers. OpenTell does just that.

Venuelabs
Venuelabs software solution allows franchise businesses to focus on what
customers are saying about the business. Venuelabs transforms local user-
generated content into actionable intelligence that can inform all facets of
your organization. Franchisors and franchisees can improve their marketing,
advertising, operations and customer service.
Here are a few specific examples of things franchisors and franchisees need
to know about:
 What are customers saying at checkout?
 Which franchise locations have the happiest customers?
 Are there any new channels where customers are starting to engage?
 Which marketing initiatives are resonating with customers and which
ones aren’t?
Venuelabs specializes in getting those questions answered…and more.

Expion
Today’s food franchise owners need to stay active on all of the major social
media channels. Most franchisors are trying to assist in this effort through the
corporate office. It’s a large undertaking. That’s where companies like Expion
come in, as they can manage 1,000’s of social media accounts from just one
interface.
Expion’s software streamlines all social media activity and it can be
configured to work within the structure of each franchisors operational
structure. Franchisees have access to Expion’s tools, and can take advantage
of the systems automation capabilities which can really save a lot of time…a
commodity that franchisees don’t always have lots of.

MindMatrix
The marketing automation solution that MindMatrix provides allows
franchisees to bring a local element into their marketing efforts. Customers
like marketing and advertising that provides a local feel, and franchisors and
franchisees that can provide it help attract more leads which can turn into
more revenue.
MindMatrix can also create high-converting franchisee website landing pages
that can be used for grand openings, one-day sales or special promotions.

Front Flip
The Front Flip App helps franchise businesses by keeping guests coming
back again and again. The App gives guests the chance to win instant prizes
every time they visit, and also sends them automated offers to their mobile
devices to drive them back to franchise locations more frequently. The App is
fun, and provides instant gratification. Guests don’t have to wait and see what
they’ve won. They can even tell their friend about their prizes on Twitter and
Facebook which engages even more potential customers.
Loyalty programs work and the team at Front Flip can help integrate Front
Flip into your overall franchise marketing mix. Front Flip loyalty programs are
designed to help build profitable long-term relationships between franchisees
and their customers.
Today’s smart franchisors and franchisees want and need great technology to
help them become more efficient and more profitable. There are plenty of
choices, with more coming online every year.
What franchise tools and solutions are you using?