Business Plans in FranchiseBlast are associated with business units.  They represent a franchisee’s objectives for a set period in time.  


To get started, go to Collaboration -> Business Plans on the navigation on the left and select a business unit.

 

Periods




The system manages periods automatically for you. At all times, there will be the four quarters of the previous, current and next year accessible shown within the period picker. 

 

Yearly plans are intended to be used for setting objectives with a broader vision than the quarterly ones. Use yearly plans to complement your quarterly plans with a long term context.

 

Pick the current quarter if you want to start setting objectives for the remainder of this quarter.  However, if you want to plan set objectives for the next quarter, pick the upcoming quarter from the period dropdown at the top right of the screen.

 

If you aren’t using yearly or quarterly periods, you can use the start and end dates on the objectives to bound your objectives to another period.


Creating Your Plan

You can start off with a sample template or create a plan from scratch.  The sample plans contain examples that you can use to get inspired while creating your first business plans.  Business Plans in FranchiseBlast are composed of four main concepts: Focus Areas, Objectives, Key Results, and Initiatives.  We will review each concept and walk you through creating a plan for a location.

Focus Areas

Focus areas help you group objectives together.  For example, they can represent objectives for marketing,  operations, employee development, and finance.  You can also group all your objectives under one focus area to keep things simple.  Start by creating your focus areas.

 


To add a new focus area, click on the +Add Focus Area. Alternatively, you can also add a new focus area by clicking on the (+) launcher at the bottom left of the screen, as shown above.  The launcher can be useful when you have an existing plan with several focus areas to quickly add a new focus area to the plan.

Objectives

Objectives represent where you want to go.  They are qualitative goals that provide direction and inspire people. They aren’t measurable and should be easy to remember.  Create an objective.


 

To add an objective, click on + Add New Objective, or use the (+) launcher at the bottom left of the screen.


To ensure that you can measure if an objective was reached or not at the end of the period, they are time-bound.  The system automatically sets the start and end date of new objectives to be the start and end of the period, however, you can change it if you need, using the Start and End fields. Within the message, you can add a hyperlink to a report outside of FranchiseBlast, for example, or to an image. 


Key Results

Key Results are metrics used to measure the success of an objective.  They should be quantitative, specific, and be measures of success for their objective.   Add 2-3 key results for your objective.


To add a key result to an objective, click on (+) Add New Key Result below the objective you want to add the key result to.  Alternatively, you can use the (+) launcher at the bottom left of the screen to add a new key result to an objective.  The launcher is useful to quickly add a key result to an objective when you have already several objectives defined in the plan. Similar to the objective, within the message, you can add a hyperlink to a report outside of FranchiseBlast, for example, or to an image. 


Initiatives

Initiatives are experiments, hypotheses, or activities, that you think could help you reach an objective.  They are associated with the objective as a whole as opposed to being associated with key results individually because an initiative is likely to impact more than one key result per objective.  Add an initiative to your objective.


To add an initiative to an objective, click on (+) Add New Initiative below the objective you want to add the initiative to.  Alternatively, you can use the (+) launcher at the bottom left of the screen to add an initiative to an objective.  The launcher is useful to quickly add an initiative to an objective when you have already several objectives defined in the plan with key results.


Be Specific

Detailed explanations lead to stronger objectives. Adding in a description can help you remember exactly what your intention was when creating the objective. Additionally, sometimes there will be an objective that does not run for the entire quarter, such as a one-time event. Here, you can edit the Start and End Date by using the date selector.  Add a description to your objective to remind yourself why it’s important to your success.

 

To add a description to an objective, click on the objective’s element, and enter your description in the Description field of the drawer screen that appears on the right of the screen.

Ensure You Can Track Your Key Results

It’s easy to list metrics for your key results, however, the hardest part is to track them.  An easy way to verify that is to write down the source from where you will track your key results in their description.  


For instance, you can track some of your metrics in a franchisee scorecard in FranchiseBlast.  Another source could include your profit and loss statements and your point of sales, for example. Make sure you can track your key results by describing where you will get the numbers from in their description.


To add a description to a key result, click on the key result’s element, and enter your description in the Description field of the drawer screen that appears on the right of the screen.


Undo Changes You Made by Mistake

If you created an objective by mistake, or that you don’t need anymore, you can easily remove them from your plan by clicking on the overflow button … at the right of their element and select Delete.  The same functionality is available for key results and initiatives as well.

 

Next

✅ Add all your objectives to your plan.  


Keep your focus on what matters by limiting yourself to 3-5 objectives.


✅ Add key results to measure all of your objectives to your plan.  


Keeping in mind that tracking those numbers throughout the period will come with some overhead.  Choose wisely which metrics are the best measures of success for an objective and limit yourself to 2-3 per objective to keep things simple.


Additionally, think about where you are going to get these numbers from while adding them to your objectives.  If tracking them will be too difficult, think about rewording them.  Alternatively, find another metric to track the success of your objective in the meantime, while you figure out other ways to track it easily.


See Also


Should you have any questions or require further assistance, please send us an email at: support@franchiseblast.com.