WHAT DOES A FRANCHISE MANAGER DO?
Published: Apr 01, 2025 – The Franchise Manager creates and implements business plans, marketing strategies, and operations to drive franchise growth. This role involves analyzing market trends and financials to improve performance, cost control, and inventory. Additionally, the manager handles legal compliance, agreement updates, and training for new store openings.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Franchise Manager
1. Franchise Manager Key Accountabilities
- Strategic Collaboration: Work closely with the Franchise Development Lead
- Strategic Planning: Inform strategy and establish mechanisms/cross-Amazon relationships to industrialize the Franchise Development process
- Franchise Development: Create franchises at scale, with speed, and market them effectively
- Financial Analysis: Generate recommendation documents for particular opportunities, including high-level financial analysis and rationale
- Pipeline Management: Own and manage inputs/opportunities for the Franchise pipeline/roadmap
- Opportunity Evaluation: Experiment with mechanisms to evaluate opportunities across multiple dimensions, and make priority recommendations
- Contract Negotiation: Oversee the contracting/negotiation process for individual Franchises
- Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner with individual BD owners and Legal to execute relevant commercial vehicles
- Franchise Execution: Execute mid- to large-sized franchise opportunities independently in support of larger org or Amazon-wide initiatives
2. Franchise Profitability Manager General Responsibilities
- Business Analysis: Analyze business opportunities and areas of improvement at the store, region, and system levels.
- Strategic Planning: Determine and implement action plans to correct areas of opportunity and drive profitability.
- Operational Evaluation: Evaluate store-level activities to ensure systems/tools are in place to ensure maximum profitability.
- Operational Excellence: Identify gaps in operational excellence and implement corrective action plans to close the gaps.
- Performance Follow-up: Follow up until operational excellence is achieved.
- Data Interpretation: Interpret sales, Profit and Loss, and quality compliance data.
- Leadership Communication: Discuss and follow up on action plans, providing regular updates to Senior Leadership.
- KPI Management: Meet or exceed monthly Key Performance Indicator metrics at all levels.
- Profitability Management: Drive profitability at the store, district, and company levels through direct compliance with strategic initiatives.
- Team Direction: Direct and follow up support teams to ensure profitability activities are followed and enforced.
- Crisis Resolution: Work tirelessly to remove stores from critical store status.
- Success Enablement: Drive activities that will increase success.
- Team Support: Support and drive team members tasked to increase success metrics at the store level.
3. Franchise Manager Role Purpose
- Program Learning: Be responsible for learning the following throughout the program
- Customer Engagement: Have the opportunity to sit in the driver's seat of a real-world existing business and take care of real customers.
- People Management: Can focus on learning to manage people and building skills
- Territory Management: Manage a territory, and, while doing so, be completely responsible for all aspects of the region.
- Logistics Management: Manage the logistics of service-oriented business operations in a specified region
- Customer Service: Maintain high levels of customer service excellence with valued repeat customers
- Marketing Strategy: Develop and execute a marketing strategy to grow the region's business
- Problem Solving: Solve the day-to-day problems that come with being a leader
- Networking: Learn how to schmooze with a network of peers, coaches, and alumni
- Career Growth: Opportunities to grow each summer and take on more responsibility and experience
- Coaching Support: Work directly with a coach who has previously been a successful student entrepreneur.
4. Franchise Manager Essential Functions
- Budget Management: Leads the budgeting process for the Pharma Business unit, including consolidation, validation, and challenging budget assumptions within guidelines provided by the CFO
- Risk Analysis: Analyses risks and opportunities and suggests plans to mitigate risks as well as to improve profitability for PEC and Franchise teams
- Closing Process: Participate in the monthly and year-end closing process, manage the relevant accruals and bookings.
- Collaboration: Closely collaborate with the shared service center to ensure a smooth period close.
- Financial Reporting: Tracks monthly financial reports, analyzing differences between the results and budget/forecast relating to sales, costs, and other Profit and Loss lines for PEC and franchise teams
- Business Challenge: Challenge business assumptions and practices if needed
- Business Partnership: Acts as an agile business partner and integrates closely into the business to better understand business practices and provide support to deliver higher market performance
- Review Management: Manages business reviews, supports ISP/Cycle meetings/PEC meetings with financial presentations and analysis
- Financial Analysis: Proactively carries out value-added analysis on financial data, supporting and testing information provided by the CFO
- Deliverable Management: Performs timely and accurate submission of deliverables, including ad-hoc requests from local, cluster, or RE management
- Compliance: Ensures alignment with the accounting principles of Novartis and the Pharma controller manual
- Audit Support: Assists in quarterly and year-end audits
5. Franchise Manager Additional Details
- Business Planning: Assist with the development and implementation of franchisee-specific business plans and budgets
- Franchise Communication: Point of contact between Franchisee and Company on brand standards’ alignment, marketing strategies and promotions, day-to-day operating standards and processes, customer relationship/feedback, staffing and recruitment, and expansion planning
- Competitive Analysis: Monitor and provide feedback information about competitor activity within the region
- Financial Support: Support the development of Franchise Management on financial performance and revenue, cost control, and stock management through analysis of its Profit and Loss and KPIs
- Local Marketing: Assist franchisees in selecting and formulating local marketing strategies to increase brand awareness and grow their business
- Legal Compliance: Manage Franchise legal responsibilities, including ensuring Franchise agreement renewals, accounts receivable, and keeping Franchisee agreements up to date with current legislation
- Franchise Auditing: Execute audit plans and market visitation to ensure Franchisees comply with legal and statutory policies and procedures
- Training Management: Organise, manage, and conduct market training for new store openings. Identify and communicate formal training needs to the training department for training intervention