Transforming sales performance with AI automation

Franchise Brokers Association (FBA) is a national leader in connecting aspiring business owners with the right franchise opportunities. With a reputation for professionalism and personalized guidance, FBA supports its broker network by processing hundreds of Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDDs). Each document, containing 200–400 pages, is packed with financial and operational details that are critical to make informed decisions.

Historically, parsing these legal documents was a grueling, error-prone task. Manually extracting key data, calculating summaries and uploading the documents to the HubSpot CRM took up to four hours per listing. This process often limited FBA to reviewing just a few listings per week, and errors in transcription or calculations eroded broker confidence and undermined trust with clients.

FBA partnered with IBM to overhaul this manual process and improve speed, accuracy and scalability. The organization chose the IBM® watsonx Orchestrate® platform for its powerful gen AI, low-code automation and innovative capabilities that are tailored for business teams. The IBM Customer Success Manager and the broader IBM team supported the implementation by conducting weekly enablement sessions, product demos and architecture reviews.

Using custom machine learning models trained on  FBA’s proprietary legal ontology, watsonx Orchestrate:

• Ingests FDDs and related documents
• Extracts key parameters, such as franchise fees, royalty rates, territory size and earnings disclosures, into structured JSON payloads
• Validates the data via a human-in-the-loop dashboard, where compliance specialists confirm or adjust edge cases
• Pushes clean data automatically into HubSpot via a configured API

This streamlined pipeline has slashed listing creation time from four hours to one—eliminating manual math errors and enabling 100% coverage across listings.

The impact of watsonx Orchestrate has been significant: a 75% reduction in listing creation time, zero math errors thanks to automated calculations, full portfolio coverage—no more cherry-picking—and higher broker and member satisfaction due to consistently accurate listings.

In 2025, FBA extended the implementation with a second layer of automation: real-time legal compliance monitoring.

A nightly machine learning pipeline now scans all live listings, automatically flagging unsubstantiated earnings claims or improper territory and royalty statements. Alerts are sent only to the compliance team when needed—providing peace of mind without additional operational overhead.

“Watsonx Orchestrate isn’t just our document parser—it’s our 24/7 compliance watchdog,” says Wall.

Looking ahead, FBA is preparing to deploy conversational AI assistants using the agentic framework of watsonx Orchestrate. These assistants will support brokers in real time, surfacing legal insights, summarizing opportunities and helping match entrepreneurs with the right franchises. This next evolution underscores FBA’s belief in automation, not as a replacement for humans, but as an amplifier of their expertise and impact.

“By cutting our listing turnaround from four hours to one, we freed up our team to focus on high‑value work,” concludes Wall.

Franchise Brokers Association (FBA) (link resides outside of ibm.com) specializes in helping aspiring entrepreneurs find and invest in the right franchise opportunities. With a trusted network of brokers and a robust training and support system, FBA serves as a cornerstone of the franchise industry—empowering candidates with transparent data, ethical guidance and modern tools.