Coaching Franchise Develops Flexible Offering

Ology, one of the world’s fastest growing business coaching franchises, says you can now have your cake and eat it. 

Created from scratch six years ago to compete with other business advice franchises, Ology quickly built a reputation as an innovator in the mature and often conservative UK franchise arena.

During that period Ology have consistently expanded and developed the offering to both franchisees and clients alike.

David Little, managing director of the business coaching franchise, says:

“Even though we officially launched the business with a proven, comprehensive model for the SME environment, our philosophy was that if you’re constantly helping business owners to improve, then we should have a focus to continually develop and innovate to be an example to our franchisees and clients, and to stay ahead of the marketplace.

“To say that at any point that our model was complete would frankly be arrogant if we are to continually lead the way in the ever changing world of business.”

It seems now that Ology were no longer content with bucking the trend in the franchise arena. They have deconstructed their offering, removing many barriers to entry encountered by potential franchisees, and opened up the business coaching opportunity to a much broader potential audience.

No longer content with differentiators like independent coach accreditation and professional behavioural certification they have taken the bold step of ceasing their franchise operation and re-launching a much more flexible licence offering.

‘As good as franchising can be, it can be a little one-sided and inflexible particularly given the current economic environment and uncertainty it creates,” says Little.

“We’ve allowed people access to all our programmes and support, yet we’re also allowing them to choose the level they want to make an entry at. We have programmes that people can deliver to any size of business, from a start-up to a multinational, and we realise that not everyone wants to take advantage of such a comprehensive range of services.

“Equally we understand that people are different and require different kinds of support. Potential licensees can now invest the original franchise fee or any level up to that, and we believe that is a much more balanced and flexible approach.”

Only time will tell if this is the right move, but Ology says it has secured a significant equity investment to back this model and recently experienced an upsurge in enquiries, suggesting the approach is working.