IT Franchising: Business in a Box

The time is right for franchising in the IT space. My goal is to have the best, most foolproof, and well-supported system for delivering managed IT services to SMBs. 

By Ilene Rosoff

I have always looked for ways to build a better mousetrap. Since starting The Launch Pad 17 years ago, I have tested tools and techniques to improve processes for better results. I like to tweak, fine-tune, and integrate. Not surprisingly, I have always had the idea that it would be great to franchise IT services as well and make use of those same methods and processes.

Early on, one of the things I noticed about the IT services industry was that it wasn't well managed from a credibility or certification standpoint-anyone could hang out a shingle. That's changed with managed services. It's not that easy, and it takes an investment in processes, people, and systems. So with managed services, the franchise model became more attractive, because it relies on the same types of structure and tools and can be profitably repeated, driven by proactive rather than reactive methodology.

WHERE WE ARE NOW
We have now laid out our business plan and how our processes will apply in a franchise model. So for everything we do, we think, "OK, how does this translate into the franchise space?" For example, we had been hearing a lot about cloud computing, so to incorporate cloud-based services, we thought about partnerships with data centers with multiple locations that could be available to our franchisees. That type of thinking has now become wrapped into the way we do business.

We have also standardized and documented every key process, created training manuals, and moved forward on the legal side-how we will structure the market, where we will franchise first, and so on. Each of our offerings is packaged, branded, and defined. The benefit of doing all this is that it has made us better at what we do.

Currently, we are about three-quarters of the way done, and hope to roll out our first offering by the end of the year or early 2010. We have two corporate "test spaces" set up so we can fine-tune all of the components. We want to make sure as we begin a larger rollout that our franchisees are well supported and every element has been tested. We also want to stay focused on what it is we do, which is to deliver excellent IT service to small businesses.

DIFFERENTIATION IS KEY
Things that will set us apart from other franchises are our requirements for continuing education as well as outreach in the communities in which our franchisees do business. We borrowed some ideas from the nonprofit sector, in that we're going arrange a quality assurance team of franchise owners to do site visits and benchmarking and service improvement reviews, so that we really keep the business at the top of its game. The other defining characteristic for us is the quality of the partnerships we build to bring a wider skillset without the overhead.

The evolution of managed services-with its processes and requirements-means we can now employ a model with real leverage that will move the industry away from non-accredited providers and laissez-faire delivery. And that's exciting!

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