Development of a Regional Telecom Operator Franchise

Franchising is a popular business model that has found its way into countries with developed market economies. Recently, thanks to the successful practices of foreign companies, this model appeared in Russia and, since 2015, the number of franchises in the Russian Federation has been growing by an average of 11% annually and by the end of 2020 it was about 2 600 units. However, the scale of its application is still not large enough, which is due to two factors: mistrust of domestic entrepreneurs and the lack of state support. It is the relatively low scale of application of this business model that is the main problem studied in this work. The degree of scientific development is considered high, since there is a huge amount of domestic and foreign literature on the topic of "franchising" (a significant contribution to the development was made by J. Brickley, F. Dark, M. Mendelssohn, V. Murphy and others), but this literature contains elements "Uniformity" due to the relative novelty of this concept. Thanks to practice-oriented research and a detailed description of the cases of real companies, knowledge in this industry will be updated and enriched. The hypothesis of the study is that if, using the example of Era Telecom, a representative of the telecommunications industry - a market with high administrative and monetary barriers to entry, it is possible to comprehensively describe a proposal for a franchisee and prove a payback of less than 2 years, then the myth of a long-term payback of a franchise business will be dispelled for industries with significantly lower barriers to entry, such as services and trade. The object of research is the communications operator "Era Telecom". The subject of the research is the development of the Era-Telecom company in the regions using the franchising model. Purpose of the study: to develop a franchise for the Nizhny Novgorod telecom operator Era Telecom to achieve the company's goal formulated according to SMART: "By the end of 2025, become a federal telecom operator with a capitalization of more than 3 billion rubles. to strengthen its position in the telecommunications market ”. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to solve a number of tasks: 1. Explore the main methods of scaling a business, their advantages and disadvantages. Focus on the franchising model. 2. Justify the choice of the key method - franchise scaling. 3. Analyze the current situation in the company and readiness for packaging into a franchise. 4. Segment the target audience for selling the franchise. 5. Determine the list of necessary documents for the franchisee and create them, using the positive and negative experience gained during the construction of a separate subdivision in the city of Cheboksary. 6. Build a financial model that calculates the cash flow for the franchisee using the input data and proves the need for cooperation with New Era Telecom. 7. Create a plan for scaling the company into regions. The scientific novelty and theoretical significance of the master's thesis lies in the way the franchise is developed. Development and packaging is carried out not on the basis of a business model that has successfully proven itself in the home region, but taking into account the positive and negative experience of opening a separate division, which will avoid chaos within the company's management structure. The practical part analyzes the readiness of the investigated company to scale up using the franchising model. The necessary package of documents is being developed for successful interaction with future franchisees, and the main aspects of selling a franchise are described in detail, such as the target audience, an algorithm for preparing for a meeting with representatives of the target audience, a scaling plan to the regions, etc. The practical significance of the results obtained is of value for Era-Telecom Company LLC and is used in the process of business scaling.