One standard, several owners
You wrote the standard, the houses are not yours, and you cannot be in fifty places at once. The number that comes out of them decides fees, bonuses and whether a contract is renewed — so it has to mean the same thing in every house, and still mean it three years from now.
The brand standard
A standard you can write out as a questionnaire
The document already exists
In a franchise the standard is written down — in the manual, in a schedule to the agreement, in the training. It is the central document of the whole business model, and usually the most carefully written paper in the building.
What is missing is a way to ask “is it being kept?” that answers with a number two people would arrive at the same way. Mostly that job is done today by somebody who drives around and writes in a notebook.
A chapter of the standard, a section of the questionnaire
Every chapter of the standard is a section of its own in the questionnaire, every requirement a question, and behind every answer are the points you decide. So the questionnaire is not a summary of the standard — it is the same document in another form.
The report follows from that: “weakest topics” ranks sections, and those sections are the chapters you wrote. The answer is not “this house is 78%” but “this house falls down on the chapter you yourself called the most important”.
The whole network
One questionnaire, not a copy per owner
The network may be a franchise, a ring of dealers, licensed partners, or simply a number of separately owned houses under one name. To the software they are the same thing: one standard, several locations, different people.
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One questionnaire for the network
A question is a questionnaire and a name together. A copy per owner means two houses' numbers are not comparable — not because anybody made a mistake, but by construction.
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A new house is measured from day one
An opening location needs no questionnaire of its own and no setup of its own. It joins the network and the same standard applies to it from that day — so its first month is already comparable.
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The unit's code, not the unit's name
Every location has a field for a code of your own — the number the agreement and your own reporting already call it by. The visits export carries it beside the name, so the report lines up with what you already have.
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A house that leaves stays in the history
Archiving stops new visits but keeps the ones already made, in the reports. Last year's network average does not change because one house closed or changed hands.
Comparability
82% today and 82% three years from now
When a fee, a bonus or a renewal depends on a number, the most important property of that number is that it cannot be remade after the fact. Most tools let a live questionnaire be edited freely — and what last year's percentage meant quietly changes along with it. Nobody lies; the baseline simply slides.
Here a question's identity locks as soon as anybody has answered it. Wording, points and order stay editable afterwards, because every answer given carries the points it was worth at the moment it was given — re-pricing moves future visits only. If the questionnaire really does need rebuilding, there is a separate path for it, and taking it is a visible and deliberate decision.
Frozen — as soon as anybody has answered
- The question's name
- The question's type
- Each answer option's value
Editable — even after a hundred visits
- Wording and description
- The points behind each option
- Order, and how sections divide
- New questions and new sections
- Whether a question is required
Every answer carries its own points, the ones it was worth when it was given. That is what makes re-pricing safe: last year's percentage is still what it was.
For the franchisee
And what the other end of the network makes of it
The franchisor makes the decision, but the whole network has to live with it — and the objections are always the same two: does the neighbour see my numbers, and am I about to be marked on somebody's mood. Both have an answer built in, and it is worth knowing before the first e-mail goes out to the network.
You see yours, and not the neighbour's
A franchisee's access is limited to their own houses: they see those results, those visits and those assessors. The neighbour's rows are not hidden on the screen — the query does not return them, which is the difference that matters the moment somebody starts editing the address bar.
The assessor list is narrowed too, so one house's report does not come with a roster of the people who visit elsewhere in the network.
And the franchisor sees the network
The same questionnaire, the same report, unrestricted: the weakest topics across the network, the assessor comparison and the change against the period before — plus a row per house in the Monday summary. An area manager sits between the two: their whole region, and not the region next door.
What matters is that these are two views of one measurement, not two different measurements. The argument is then about what to do with the number, rather than about whose number is right.
For the franchisee
Reads, does not write — and that is deliberate
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They do not score their own house
The role that reads the reports cannot record a visit. Scoring your own house is a self-assessment — a different measurement, and it must not be mixed into one average with the auditor's.
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Nor correct one afterwards
Correcting a visit stays with the network's administrator. A correction is a bookkeeping act, and it is not done by the person being measured — the same reason an assessor cannot revise their own report after seeing the score.
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But they get everything they are judged on
Every visit as a PDF with the answers and the points, and the report naming the sections where points were lost. So a house finds out before the next audit does — which is the only way the number ever gets better.
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An account per manager costs nothing
The price depends on how many locations you have, not how many people. Giving every manager in the network access does not add a euro to the invoice — charging per seat is what shrinks access everywhere else.
Write your standard out
Seven days free. Start with one house, turn the first chapter of the standard into a questionnaire, and see what the first visit shows.
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