FranConnect Announces Acquisition of RizePoint, A Leading Provider of Quality Management Systems for Multi-Location Businesses

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: February 29, 2024— FranConnect, the market leading provider of sales, operations, and marketing solutions to franchises and multi-location businesses announced today it has acquired RizePoint, a leading provider of quality management systems (QMS) serving global restaurant, retail, and hospitality brands. This is FranConnect's third acquisition over a four-year period and marks another significant milestone for FranConnect in extending its reach beyond franchise brands to serve the operational needs of the broader ecosystem of multi-unit owners, locations, front-line employees, and suppliers.

The addition of RizePoint to the FranConnect platform brings deep quality management capabilities to FranConnect's already comprehensive franchise management platform. Designed to help organizations effectively manage compliance, maintain quality standards, and streamline operations, RizePoint is known for its industry leading mobile auditing and inspection platform, used for location audits, health and safety checks, and supplier management. Three of the top five global restaurant brands use RizePoint, along with Ecolab, Wendy's, Focus Brands, Dine Brands, L Brands, and Sodexo. More than 2 million audits are conducted annually using RizePoint, with over one million users across 120 countries and translated in over 39 languages. 

"The challenge of running a multi-location business gets increasingly complex with expansion and growth, regardless of whether franchised or owned. Brands need to ensure that operators are complying with brand standards, but also adhering to health and safety initiatives and following daily tasks and checklists. As well, the growing challenges to our global supply chain means that auditing suppliers is equally important to compliance against those standards," said Gabby Wong, CEO of FranConnect. "Along with FranConnect's market leading operational platform, our combined solution will enable us to monitor the performance of a brand, end-to-end, from the brand to the operator, location, front-line employees and even the supplier community." 

Backed by Baltimore-based Access Holdings, RizePoint is headquartered out of Salt Lake City, Utah, with employees across North America and the UK. Rizepoint's offices and employee base will now be a part of FranConnect's global footprint. With RizePoint's customers, FranConnect's reach will now span over one million locations worldwide.

"The acquisition of RizePoint by FranConnect will greatly benefit our customers and the industry. By uniting forces, we are in a unique position to offer a more robust and comprehensive suite of solutions that will further empower our customers to effectively manage compliance, elevate quality standards, and drive operational excellence. This acquisition will accelerate our ability to innovate, develop, and deploy meaningful advancements to our products and solutions," said Kari Hensien, CEO of RizePoint.

"We are thrilled to welcome RizePoint customers and employees into the FranConnect community," said Wong. "Kari and her team bring deep expertise in QMS that our customers want and need from FranConnect. Further, with this acquisition, we continue to demonstrate that we intend to look across the broader market to provide the best tools and solutions to solve the unique challenges facing multi-location businesses."

Canaccord Genuity LLC acted as exclusive financial advisor to RizePoint for this transaction.

About FranConnect 

FranConnect is the leading enterprise software provider for franchise and multi-location businesses. For over 20 years, the FranConnect platform has served as the sales, operations, and marketing backbone for over 1500 brands and one million locations worldwide. These brands rely on FranConnect to expand locations, streamline unit operations, enhance collaboration across the network of locations, and improve profitability. FranConnect's customers are some of the most iconic and recognized brands in the industry, including SPARC/Authentic Brands (Forever 21), Tropical Smoothie Café, Authority Brands, and Papa John's. Backed by private-equity investor Serent Capital, FranConnect is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, with global offices in Australia, India, Colombia, and Canada. For more information on FranConnect, visit www.franconnect.com.