SIGNIFICANCE of Training in Franchising

Training is an important aspect in franchising. Let’s discuss how some of the top brands are doing this as a ritual and routine to keep their flock together.

- Chackochen Mathai

Being in the franchising industry for the last three decades and working with major brands in the IT training and Retail sector has been a blessing with lot of learnings in the filed of franchising. As part of my PhD, thesis in franchise management, I had the opportunity to study various foreign and Indian brands and have learned how companies like, McDonalds, KFC, Dominos, Chick-fill-a, 7 leaven, Marriot, Burger King, Subway have been in the fore front of the franchising business and how they have used training as a tool to educate and help the franchisees to do their business in a manner to ensure customer satisfaction and brand penetration in different markets to give the same experience to the customers in each of the franchisee stores.

In India, when the IT boom was there it was NIIT, APTECH, SSI, Radiant, CADD Centre and many other companies that operated in this industry. In the turn of events many of the franchising companies in this sector are not there in the market due to many reasons, IT education has changed, demand vs supply was over loaded and technology changed faster than what the franchisees thought. But they all did the best in training the franchisees as the competition was very high with many brands competing for the same student they wanted to enrol. The best trained franchisee and his team would win the contract.

Companies like CADD Centre, KID Zee, Mahindra First Choice, Raymond and a few more have survived, based on the continued education support given to the franchisees to manage their business.