Running a business can be lonely. With Ziik building a network doesn’t have to be.

About Company

Trafalgar Education is the parent company behind two international performing arts education brands: Stagecoach Performing Arts and Drama Kids. 

Stagecoach was founded in the UK in 1987 and offers extracurricular classes in singing, acting and dancing for children aged three to 18. Lisa herself was one of its early students before later building a career in franchising and eventually becoming CEO. 

Drama Kids originated in Australia and uses drama to help children develop language, confidence and communication skills. Together, the two brands reach more than 170,000 students across several countries. Their classes are delivered through extensive franchise networks whose owners run independent local businesses under the two established brands.

Challenges before Ziik

The franchise network already communicated before Ziik, but the conversations were fragmented. There were emails, individual relationships and numerous WhatsApp groups. Some franchisees belonged to several groups at once, often discussing similar issues with slightly different combinations of people.

“One franchisee told me she was in seven different WhatsApp groups,” Lisa Stead recalls. “They were often discussing the same things, but with different people in each group.”

Simply combining them into one large chat wasn’t the answer. Franchisees wanted separate spaces for different conversations, from growing a business and improving turnover to the challenges of being a new parent or going through menopause.

“They wanted all those conversations,” Lisa Stead explains. “They just didn’t want them spread across seven different places.”

Trafalgar Education needed one platform that could bring the network together without removing the smaller communities and focused conversations that franchisees valued.

Requirements for a new solution

The platform had to support two separate brands, each with its own identity, tone and community. It also had to be:

• intuitive enough to use without formal training
• accessible across countries and time zones
• suitable for both community-building and formal head-office communication
• capable of handling manuals, compliance and important documents
• flexible enough to provide different access levels as the user base expands.

Ziik offered Trafalgar Education the unusual combination of one underlying system and two distinct branded environments.

“The Drama Kids platform feels like Drama Kids, and the Stagecoach platform feels like Stagecoach,” Lisa Stead says. “But at head office, we only have to learn and manage one system.”

Results

Franchisees no longer have to run their businesses alone

Ziik gives franchisees a shared space where they can ask questions, discuss challenges and learn from one another. Sometimes the head office provides the answer. On other occasions, another franchisee may already have faced the same issue and can offer immediate advice.

“They encourage each other, motivate each other and share the things they’re proud of,” Lisa Stead says. “Someone might post an accomplishment from their students, and people will respond, congratulate them and ask how they did it.”

This peer-to-peer support has helped create a broader sense of community across countries and time zones.

One network with room for different conversations

Instead of numerous disconnected WhatsApp groups, franchisees now have one place where conversations can still be organised around different interests and needs. The platform feels familiar because it works much like the social media tools people already understand, but it remains a private, work-focused environment.

“It’s colourful, bright and interactive,” Lisa Stead says. “It feels like something people want to use. It doesn’t feel like work.”

For head office, it also provides one clear channel for bulletins, news and important updates.

Knowledge is available whenever it is needed

Both brands have placed their operations manuals and support information inside Ziik. Rather than navigating through folders or waiting for head office to respond, franchisees can search for the information they need when the question arises, even if that happens outside normal office hours.

“If they’re working at ten o’clock at night, we don’t have to be,” Lisa Stead says. “The app does the work for us.”

The searchable manuals cover operational questions as well as important contacts for areas such as safeguarding, wellbeing and support for children with special educational needs.

Compliance is easier to manage

Franchisees must maintain documentation covering areas such as insurance, background checks, health and safety policies and risk assessments. Some documents need to be renewed annually, while others follow different schedules. Previously, much of this was managed through email, where requests and reminders could easily disappear among enquiries from prospective students. With Ziik, franchisees receive clear reminders and can complete the required tasks directly from their phones.

“Once it has all been programmed in, it largely manages the process for you,” Lisa Stead explains.

For especially important updates, head office can require users to read the full message and confirm that they have seen it. The team can then follow up directly with anyone who has not responded.

Fast adoption without a lengthy rollout

Lisa Stead first encountered Ziik at the International Franchise Show, where she agreed to a ten-minute demonstration after initially insisting that she did not want to be sold anything.

“Within those ten minutes, I could see how simple and easy it was,” she says. “I thought: this is what we need.”

The implementation reinforced that impression. After experiencing other system rollouts that took months, Lisa Stead found Ziik’s onboarding unusually straightforward. Within the first month, around 80% of the Stagecoach franchise network had logged in, without incentives or an extensive training programme.

“We simply showed them where it was and how to set up a password,” she says. “They could immediately see the value.”

Favourite Features

News feed

For franchisees, the news feed is the centre of the community. It provides a familiar space where they can post questions, celebrate student achievements, share ideas and ask their peers for advice. Because conversations remain visible to the wider network, an answer can benefit far more people than the person who originally asked the question.

“It allows everyone to jump in and help, whether that’s somebody from head office or another franchisee.”

Searchable operations manuals

The operations manuals give franchisees access to support whenever they need it. Instead of searching through folders or contacting head office, they can enter a question and quickly locate the relevant section. That is particularly valuable across a global network where franchisees may be working long after the UK head office has closed.

Compliance tools and reminders

Ziik gives Trafalgar Education one structured place to manage recurring documentation and compliance requirements. Automated reminders reduce the administrative burden for both head office and franchisees, while the ability to see what has been completed makes follow-up more targeted and efficient.

Roles and access controls

As Trafalgar Education prepares to add general managers, principals and teachers, the ability to define roles and permissions will become increasingly important. Individual franchisees can give team members access to the information they need without exposing confidential or irrelevant material. At the same time, head office retains central control and can remove access immediately when required.

Read confirmations

For critical information, Trafalgar Education can require franchisees to read an entire update and confirm that they have done so. This gives head office a clear overview of who has received important information and makes it possible to follow up directly with the relatively small number who have not.