A franchise system builds on the combined strengths of independent decision makers. Decisions can only be as good as the underlying information and experience. How well and how fast the partners re-apply existing knowledge is critical for their success.

Use the FranchiseEngine for example for:

• franchisee online manuals
• customer relations
• human resources
• supply chains
• investor relations
• fan clubs
• franchisee acquisition

Partners in a franchise both use know how of others and also produce know how for later use by others. A franchise needs knowledge management to grow in quality and knowledge communication to cover distance in space and time.

Traditional web servers are insufficient to address this: the one-author/many-readers model of a single web server does not support two-way knowledge communication, and multiple servers individually authored by the partners do not support knowledge management.

By contrast, the FranchiseEngine is a single point of access for many authors and many readers, under a uniform knowledge communication and management structure. Management decides document structure with read and write access rights of well defined user groups and their respective roles.

The FranchiseEngine collects information when and where it arises and provides knowledge when and where it is needed, bidirectionally to authorized identified users.

• Business processes include:
  • management reports
  • taxation, finance, insurance
  • product briefings
  • marketing campaigns
  • direct mail services
  • customer help desks
  • ISO9000 documentation
  • ISO14000 documentation
  • work force issues
  • real estate transactions

• Knowledge bases include:
  • decision support cases
  • what-if simulations
  • online literature repository
  • peer group advisory systems