Luxottica is the owner of OPSM, Budget Eyewear, Laubman & Pank, Sunglass Hut and Bright Eyes brands in Australasia. With hundreds of retail stores, across a variety of brands, Luxottica’s challenge was to develop an Ops Manual which meets the needs of all its franchisees.

Peter Baily, director of franchising at Luxottica, spearheaded the drive for a new Ops Manual in early 2010. He knew Luxottica needed to have the Ops Manual content updated, have greater integration of policy, processes and tools to execute these, all while being totally accessible to franchisees and managers through an online portal. A consulting firm helped develop the new brand-specific Ops Manuals, and after many months of development, design and drafting, Luxottica had a robust, online structured Ops Manual.

The manual has now become one of the key selling points for prospective franchisees, as it showcases their entire business systems, the expectations of their franchisors and what operational excellence means to them. And they have seen greater uniformity in operations across their stores and greater clarity across their system as their business system has become more defined and robust, resulting in a greater reflection of best practice in operations.

Baily goes on to say, “In my 17 plus years of franchising, I’ve seen time and time again that great franchise systems have great Ops Manuals. They invest the resources into getting this critical document relevant and reflective of their system, and work had to keep it that way. We wouldn’t be experiencing the success we currently have I believe, without the new Ops Manual to support the growth of our network.”