April 2013
| Business World Magazine | 123
ing of this full survey option. In other cases,
FBR has assisted companies by developing
customized surveys which come with specif-
ic questions designed for aspects unique to
the company’s growth or operational strat-
egy.
Rowan says attributes part of FBR’s suc-
cess to factors arising during the economic
recession, as markets became more cost
conscious and risk averse, greater emphasis
was placed on assessing investment strate-
gies, particularly in the case of private equity
coming into franchising. “There was great
want to survey brands to better know what
they were getting into and whether changes
were needed or not,” she says.
Franchisors have also begun to increas-
ingly assess the strengths within their com-
posite of franchisees. Today, franchisors rely
on FBR to help provide insight on the overall
business acumen of their unit owners in ac-
cordance with their unique strategies to in-
crease growth of their brand or overall prof-
itability. In other cases, franchisors use FBR’s
services to more fully monitor just how well
they’re responding to the needs of their fran-
chisees. As Rowan says, there was a time that
franchisors simply wanted to sell their brand
and open as many stores as they could. To-
day, the greater emphasis is on assuring that
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