Operations and Training Manuals

If your secret is still in your head, you need to get it down on paper. This is so that your franchisee investors have something that they can use to replicate your business concept. Quite often we find people have written much of the business operations down but it only needs formatting.

However, we usually find that much work still needs to be done to produce a document that is professionally presented and can be used for training purposes.

The manuals written for your business become part of your intellectual property. This adds value to your business.

There are many aspects to your manuals and some companies have separate editions for certain elements dependent upon your particular business needs, for example, some businesses devote an entire manual to sales or marketing.

Some of the many elements that may form part of your manual may include:

• Administration 
• Legal aspects 
• Trade Practices Act elements
• Workplace Health and Safety 
• Staff Recruitment 
• Employment Processes 
• Banking 
• Financial Management 
• IT operations
• Products and Services 
• Customer Service 
• Business Planning 
• Reporting 
• Marketing 
• Local Area Marketing 
• Sales and Personal Selling 
• Purchasing

If you think that this is all too much hard work and you can simply just get someone else in to do your manuals, then you are mistaken.

The truth is that only the creator of the concept can tell the story, so you only have two ways of writing the manuals.

1. Do it yourself
2. Have someone sit and listen to you for hours on end as if they are writing a book for you.

By far the best way is to write out the basics of your manual yourself in draft form and then get someone to write up in an appropriate format and add all the legal and business elements for you.

Hand in hand with the manuals is the training format. Think about:

• Training Schedule
• Training Workbooks
• Test Papers

Your operations manuals are live documents and subject to change as you continuously improve your system. Therefore, the manuals must be written in such a format to replace and make changes and updates.

The most cost efficient way to use manuals is to have access to them by your franchisees on line. However, it is a view in some circles that passing on hard copies of manuals adds to the perceived value of the franchisees purchase. In addition, with the manuals staring at you, on a close shelf, may encourage better use by franchisees.