Continued Franchisee Professional Development

Continued professional development by way of training franchisees to maintain and enhance their knowledge and skills has been a cornerstone of our mission to engage and retain the best professionals within the BAN group to meet our “big firm expertise, small firm rates” tag line and to place us far above our “one-man show” competitors.

In spite of this, franchisees are responsible for acquiring and maintaining the necessary skills to conduct their franchised business. Head Office may arrange ongoing training and seminars presented either by it or third parties and the cost thereof is paid by the BAN Fund.

Over the past 3 years or so, Head Office has been searching for somebody within the BAN franchise group with superior technical knowledge and above average skills to present technical training that would also contribute to franchisees CPD points with their respective Controlling Bodies. The person we have been looking for needed to be good enough to merit paying them for providing training. We have eventually found that special talent and technical knowledge in Madeleine Pretorius.

Madeleine graduated with a BCom Honours in Accounting (cum laude) at the University of Johannesburg, after achieving a BCom Accounting (cum laude) at the same university. She completed her SAICA articles at PricewaterhouseCoopers, successfully concluding the final qualifying examinations to register with SAICA as a chartered accountant CA (SA).

As proof of a franchise’s buying power, the estimated cost of BAN providing webinar training of R208 per webinar (simple topic) or R355 (complex topic) compares favourably to the average cost of R470 offered by controlling bodies, and the estimated cost of BAN providing training at a venue in either Cape Town or Johannesburg is R585 (simple topic) and R770 (complex topic) compared to the lowest fee of around R1044 for a seminar presented by controlling bodies.

It will still be prudent for franchisees to attend some seminars or webinars through relevant controlling bodies as it is not possible for BAN to cover many varied topics in a year, particularly those topics that are more of interest than necessity for franchisees, for example, business valuations.

Head office has offered Madeleine the role as our national trainer in her capacity as a franchisee, and although she has accepted in principle and is very keen on the opportunity, she has not yet formally accepted as she needs to consider the financial benefit of our proposal, which we are yet to provide. An assurance needs to be reached where the time and effort Madeleine puts in should not exceed her financial benefit to make it worthwhile for her.

Given that franchisees current monthly contributions to the BAN Fund of R845 (excluding Greatsoft) will not cover training in addition to its other expenses, Head Office will be preparing a financial forecast to February 2017 which will be presented to franchisees for discussion on options at our forthcoming AGM. This forecast will be sent to franchisees by the end of December, when the number of new franchisees joining will be known, for perusal before the AGM.

This topic will be tabled on our forthcoming AGM agenda for participatory discussion and final resolution.