The Flywheel Group

K Jackson had an interesting post recently on a Cloud Computing research report. The Open Group has published a white paper on how to build and measure cloud computing return on investment (ROI). Produced by the Cloud Business Artifacts (CBA) project of The Open Group Cloud Computing Work Group.

When speaking with most franchise industry people, and there are some exceptions out there, most of their views represent the closed model. If it doesn’t fit their view of the world, mostly based on quarter century old paradigms, then it won’t fly.

Most, if not all, of the significant challenges facing organizations today result from the failing of leadership to convey the value of long term goals to stakeholders for fear of the near. The “Tyranny of the Urgent”, as Hummel wrote, get in the way. Nowhere is this more true than in the franchise business model, where the temptation of selling franchises that hold promise for easy riches in the near term undermines any hope for longevity and true value creation.

Improving internal systems, methods and support to really help existing franchises achieve greater profit and stability is more important than ever. Franchise flywheel represents the type of tools ZOR’s should be adopting to put an emphasis on improving core capabilities until the damper on growth passes.

You see while larger organizations might be wary of the Cloud, each day they fail to shift their IT infrastructure to the Cloud is a day the competition is gaining a leg. The same is true for all industries including franchising.

Do you think franchising generally has ignored the benefits that technology and systems offer? What can explain this type of thinking? We continue to mine for the insightful ZORS who can see the value in the franchise flywheel. Can you help us find some more evolved ZORS to speak with?

Bottom line is the SOP is not going to likely work for most franchise systems given the degree of change going on. If you are a manager, executive or franchisee, how aware are you of these pressures and do you concur with the analysis that your business models are feeling significant and greater pressures requiring fundamental change ?

I take for granted that many people understand what “Cloud Computing” is. Speaking at different events and talking with clients in franchising and other industries, I’ve become more aware that many don’t truly understand what the term “Cloud Computing” means.

What is even more alarming, if you are relying on a third party vendor, which might have financial issues you are unaware of given today’s environment, to manage and host your Intranet content or business systems based on a proprietary infrastructure, you may have some real trouble ahead. What happens if they fold ? What upgrades are they making to adopt new tools ?

With the surge in more affordable and flexible cloud based information systems, like salesforce.com, many intelligent organizations are evaluating changing their information systems. This is particularly true for franchise organizations, whose unique business models offer an opportunity to improve productivity significantly via the wise adoption of well crafted solutions like franchiseflywheel.com .