Franchise Services Changes Hands

The Wichita Eagle:

The future of the local operation known as Franchise Services Corp. and its 400 employees remains bright following its purchase, which company officials announced Monday.

Franchise Services’ parent, Savista Corp., sold the Wichita-based unit to outsourcing giant Accenture Ltd. Terms of the purchase weren’t disclosed.

Franchise Services, which has offices in the former Thorn Americas building at 37th North and Rock Road, handles human resources work, accounting and training for midsize companies.

Accenture is the world’s second-largest business consultant, handling outsourced operations for many of the world’s largest companies.

Accenture stands by an earlier promise by Franchise Services to hire about 620 additional workers by 2010, company officials said.

Accenture expects big growth in the demand for outsourced services by midsize companies, those with 2,000 to 12,000 employees.

The global market for the work, called business process outsourcing, is expected to rise to $25 billion annually in 2009 from $17 billion now, Accenture said in Monday’s announcement.

Accenture will help Franchise Services grow faster than it could have on its own, said Kevin Campbell, global managing director of Accenture’s business process outsourcing operations.

Franchise Services has about 100 customers, largely in the hotel and restaurant businesses. But Accenture has contacts across all industries and around the world, Campbell said.

Accenture wanted the unit because outsourcing for midsize companies remains a fractured business, and Accenture sees n opportunity there.

The company has its roots in Pizza Hut’s former headquarters here. Founders Dale Hoyer, Debby Haskell and Denise Christian were members of Pizza Hut’s corporate controller’s office when Pizza Hut decided to get out of doing its franchisees’ accounting in the late 1990s.

They and another partner, Brad Brooks, founded Franchise Services Corp. in 1998 with Pizza Hut’s blessing and quickly picked up contracts covering 260 Pizza Huts. The company tapped into two big business trends: the growth of national restaurant chains and the pressure on businesses to cut costs by outsourcing.

Growth accelerated when the partners sold their company in 2001 to eMac Digital of Rosemont, Ill., a company created by McDonald’s Corp. to sell services to its franchisees.

McDonald’s sold its stake in eMac Digital to its partner, Accel-KKR, in 2003. The firm was renamed Savista.