Our Story

What We Do

The Franchise Relationships Institute has been in business for 17 years helping franchise companies to better manage their people issues. Our ongoing research program, with hundreds of franchisors and thousands of franchisees, has established us as global leaders in understanding the factors that impact on franchisee suitability, satisfaction and success.

This research has enabled us to develop specialised publications, tools and processes for the franchising sector. Is also enables us to benchmark franchise companies on the health of their franchise relationships.

Everything we do is aimed at helping franchisees and franchisors to work together constructively so they can create happy customers, build brand value, make a reasonable profit and enjoy their work. We believe these to be worthwhile goals of a franchise system.

We are not in the business of helping franchisors to maximise short-term profits at the expense of their franchisees, nor of helping franchisees to undermine a franchise system. If we believe a client has a destructive agenda we will not do work for them or will first work with them to modify their agenda.

We do not offer general franchise consultancy services. There is an abundance of businesses offering services in this market. Similarly we do not offer marketing, finance, legal or IT consultancy advice as there are plenty of experts in these areas.

What we do is conduct quality research, develop excellent support tools and deliver inspiring education programs that empower franchisors to deliver on their promise to their franchisees.

Our Reputation

We have always been, and will continue to be, in franchising for the long haul. As such we seek to build lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with our clients. This sounds like a cliché but it’s not.

Because we strive to make a genuine difference to our clients businesses and lives, most of our work comes through word of mouth. Many of our clients continue to use our services over a period of years and recommend us to their colleagues in other franchise companies. This helps us to focus our attention on doing the business rather than getting the business. It also lowers our marketing costs and enables us to charge fair and reasonable fees to our clients.

Our Values

When the business was created one of its goals was to generate profits that could be used for worthwhile causes. Another was to create a business that the owners could be proud of. As such we try to uphold the following values through our work:

1. Whilst it is important for our business to be profitable, it is equally important to be about improving people’s lives.
2. We seek to make a genuine difference through our work and we have found that it is often the little extra things that make the difference.
3. Our business is about helping to develop more confident, caring and competent people — franchisors, franchisees as well as suppliers and our own team.
4. When clients work with us they are working with real people; what we say and do is who we really are and what we really think.
5. While we recognize complexity, we strive to make the complex simple. We do not use jargon and we work hard to keep things at a practical, useful level.
6. We seek to stay ahead of industry trends and retain a leadership position through ongoing research. We are always looking for innovative, new and better ways to help our clients.
7. We won’t compromise on quality. We are perfectionists and if we have to do it again we will.
8. All team members contribute the success of the business through their focus, commitment and hard work. (The truth is that you probably need to have a little bit of a workaholic streak to survive here!)
9. We try to incorporate a fun element in everything we do. So while we work hard we also enjoy ourselves. After all the best learning and the best results usually come when people are enjoying themselves.

Community Involvement

Each year the principals of the business donate time and money to community, business and educational projects. These include:

• Lecturing to students at universities and supervising psychology graduate students.
• Lecturing to global franchise industry bodies on best practice people issues in franchising.
• Sponsoring and conducting research into the people issues in franchising.
• Donating funds to worthwhile community groups and educational institutions and events.
• Organizing educational summits, round tables and conferences.
• Sitting on franchise industry advisory committees such as the Franchise Council of Australia.

We Get the Clients We Deserve

We believe in the power of franchising to help people gain financial independence, express their drive to achieve in creative ways and put something back into the community.

A business tends to get the clients and the advisers that it deserves. If you relate to our approach, we look forward to working with you.