FranConnect, the leading provider of franchise management solutions for driving success in franchise sales, operations, and marketing, announced today it has expanded its C-suite, promoting current marketing leader Ian Walsh to the newly established position of Chief Operating Officer. Walsh is charged with overseeing the company’s cohesive approach to all forward-facing customer operations, from customer enablement and adoption to retention and market development.

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Walsh joined FranConnect in 2020 as Senior Vice President of marketing and over the past two years has built a high-performing, professional marketing function to drive customer acquisition growth. Earlier this year he also assumed responsibility for the customer success team, integrating marketing best practices and scale into customer engagement. As COO, he will oversee professional services, customer success, strategy & commercialization and a newly developed function dedicated to partnering with other services and technology companies to jointly serve customers and the franchising market.

“2021 has been a year of tremendous growth for FranConnect, and the time is right to expand our leadership team as we prepare for 2022,” said Gabby Wong, CEO of FranConnect.  “In order to drive even greater impact and value for our customers throughout their journey with us, we must operate with cohesion and consistency across all areas. Ian has shown an impressive ability to work with the talented leaders throughout our organization, putting strategy into action and delivering results.”

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While FranConnect’s success this past year included building new and expanded relationships with more than 100 franchise brands and multi-location businesses, the company also delivered on several new investments in technology. These included the integration of new Field Operations capabilities from its acquisition of FranchiseBlast, streamlined unit opening processes, and expanded use of Artificial Intelligence for increased franchise development effectiveness.

“The incredible momentum we have experienced over this past year has created a perfect opportunity to evolve our structure as we look to 2022 and beyond,” said Walsh. “Our teams are going to be working together like never before as we refine how we bring new products to market and support our clients in every step of their own growth plans.”