Prestige planning for growth
AFTER A RECORD-BREAKING 2008, PRESTIGE NURSING, THE UK’S LEADING HEALTHCARE FRANCHISE, IS SET TO UNVEIL A RANGE OF NEW SERVICES IN 2009 AND IS FACING THE FUTURE WITH CONFIDENCE AND PLANS FOR GROWTH.

Although 2008 will go down as the year when the credit crunch finally turned into a full-blown recession, some sectors have continued to grow, no matter what the general economic conditions.

Jonathan Bruce, Managing Director of Prestige Nursing, explains why healthcare recruitment and homecare services continue to be very resilient markets: “Unlike other franchise opportunities, healthcare spend is typically not discretionary and will be at the bottom of the list when individuals or organisations are looking to trim their expenditure. Our franchisees still have to work very hard on delivering a high quality, value for- money service, but all of the long-term indicators show that the demand for healthcare, whether at home or in a residential setting, will continue to grow strongly.”

Having helped steer the company through the last recession in the UK back in the early 1990s, Jonathan is anything but complacent. He says:“2008 was a very good year for Prestige, with sales up 20 per cent year on year, but we know that we have to do it all again in 2009.” Jonathan identifies Prestige Nursing’s business model as one of the key reasons for the company’s success: “We have always strived to offer a good range of well-defined services to our customers, and in recent years this has meant offering both healthcare recruitment and homecare services as a reflection of the growing convergence between health and social care.”

MAKING THE RIGHT CHOICE WITH PRESTIGE NURSING
Following a highly successful career in medical device sales, both in the UK and previously in her native South Africa, Carol Stafford was looking to change direction and take on a new challenge and has always been attracted to the idea of franchising.

Says Carol: “I have a lot of experience in sales and was looking to move into an industry that allowed me to exploit these talents, whilst offering the potential for significant earnings.” Having already decided that franchising was a perfect way of helping her realise these ambitions, she was taken aback by the number of opportunities on offer. “I was looking for a management franchise, and eventually settled on the care sector as it offered excellent long-term prospects given the UK’s demographic profile and the growing need for care at home,” she says. “I hadn’t realised though quite how many companies offered franchises in the domiciliary and healthcare sectors and the choice was quite bewildering.”

Carol heard about Prestige Nursing and decided to see what the company could offer. She says: “Their honesty, drive and professionalism made a real impact on me, as did their experience of running both company-owned and franchised branches.” After the initial meeting with the franchise team at Prestige, Carol met and talked with many of the existing franchisees. “Their feedback on the support I would receive was overwhelmingly positive, as was their experience of the Prestige business model,” she says.

Unlike many domiciliary care franchises, Prestige Nursing offers the complementary area of healthcare recruitment as an additional income stream for all franchisees. Managing Director, Jonathan Bruce, explains why this is so important: “Domiciliary care is undoubtedly an area that offers significant opportunities and with our experience in this area we feel very confident that we can offer franchisees a full range of distinctive services to take advantage of them. However, it does take time to develop this type of business, which is why offering healthcare recruitment can not only allow franchisees to generate income more quickly, but also gives them an even wider range of services to offer their clients and spreads the risk accordingly.”

“To be honest, this was one of the main reasons why I chose Prestige,” states Carol. “Along with the fact that they offer a comprehensive back office support function as part of the ongoing management fee. This will save me an immense amount of time and allow me the freedom to grow my business quickly and effectively. I’ll be joining an established network of company-owned and franchised branches across the UK, which has a real reputation for excellence, and this fills me with confidence as well.”

With her new business about to launch in 2009, how does she feel about the opportunity now? “I’ve just finished training and I can’t wait to get started,” says Carol. “Prestige has been with me every step of the way so far and I’ve already had enquiries coming into the business and we haven’t even launched yet. The research we conducted prior to setting up has allowed us to target our efforts to where we know they’ll have most effect.”

As Carol discovered, you do not need previous experience of the healthcare industry to make a successful franchise business with Prestige Nursing. Pam Feltham, Franchise Manager at Prestige, explains: “Our leading franchised branch is owned by someone who originally trained to be a railway designer. Like many of our new franchisees, he realised that a franchise with Prestige Nursing was an excellent investment vehicle and one that would allow him to blend his own flair for business with the experience, support and systems of a seasoned franchisor.”

So will the Prestige Nursing franchise be for everyone? Pam thinks not: “In terms of the initial investment of £30,000 and the working capital requirement of up to £45,000, we sit towards the top end of current healthcare franchises. However, you get what you pay for and we push our franchisees hard to ensure they are every bit as successful as they have told us they want to be.”

BUSINESS MIX
The company’s franchised branches have all enjoyed the benefits of this business mix and have been able to capitalise on opportunities that increasingly require companies to offer a broader range of complementary services. Pam Feltham, Prestige Nursing’s Franchise Manager, believes there is another equally important dimension to this as well: “As Prestige operates across two business sectors, our franchisees have a greater range of clients to choose from and that means less risk in the long term as we reduce our dependence on income streams from only a few clients.”

Despite the UK’s current economic woes, 2009 is set to be an exciting year for Prestige. “We’re launching a specialist homecare service early in the year, with the aim of targeting client groups that require highly specialised or complex care at home,” states Jonathan Bruce. “There is an increasing drive by the government to offer more and more nursing and domiciliary care in the community through the NHS and we are uniquely placed to take advantage of that.”

The company is also launching a range of online services for its agency workers, allowing them to check when and where they are working, view their payslips and amend their personal details. Pam Feltham takes up the story: “This new online facility will allow our franchisees to interact far more effectively with their agency workers as most of the more mundane activities can be carried out through our website. Not only will this be a real value added service for our workers, but it will also allow our franchisees to spend more time growing their business, which is the key principle of our franchise system anyway.” Whilst Prestige deliberately limits the number of franchisees it takes on each year, there has been an enormous amount of interest shown in the franchise over the past few months, meaning that 2009 shows every sign of being even busier than 2008 for Jonathan, Pam and the team at Prestige..

For more details on the Prestige Nursing franchise opportunity contact Pam Feltham on 0208 254 7533 or email franchise@prestige-nursing.co.uk