In this day and age when people change jobs every 3.2 years and change their life-time plan at least every six months or change spouses and get divorces more than anytime in modern history franchising companies must be careful to continually upgrade its data bases of its owners, outlets and their residences.

Anyone who maintains databases, which have to do with humans knows that often the older data is pretty much worthless. In fact he biggest problem in law enforcement or government records is the data is all BS now after years of updating. Have you looked at your credit report lately? Well that is another perfect example of the problem.

A problem, which franchisors do not have the luxury of having as there is simply too much at stake. As a franchisor, I noticed this dilemma and therefore decided to add a clause into our franchise agreement to address this issue. Below is what I came up with and it did indeed solve the problem and provided me leverage when franchisees attempted to abuse they system;

7.23 Address, Telephone Number and E-Mail Account Changes

Either party may change his or its address, telephone number or e-mail account address by giving notice in writing of such change of address to the other party. Franchisee must notify Franchisor of Franchisee’s change of address, telephone number or change of e-mail account address within fifteen (15) calendar days of such change. If Franchisee moves their residence out of the Marketing Area, Franchisee must hire two-thirds of their labor force for the Franchised Business from within the Marketing Area including at least one manager or crew leader as provided for in the Confidential Operations Manual.

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I guess what I am saying is if you are a franchising company this is an issue you MUST address and whether you do it in the franchise agreement or perhaps you will consider another method, you cannot ignore the issue. I hope you will consider all this in 2006.

Lance Winslow

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