What role does technology play in our industry? Aren’t we a “people” business? In its broadest sense, technology is the means people use to improve their surroundings. We use technology to control the world in which we live. Technology is the use of knowledge, tools, and systems to make our lives easier and better.
Historically our industry has focused on using technology to manage and enable the financial end of the business. We started with computer-based billing in the country club segment to eliminate the “green ledger” card process of tracking member charges in the restaurant and on the golf course.
In the 1970s, we added the ability to electronically draft a member’s account, allowing us to offer memberships at a lower price point with monthly payments. When computers became powerful enough to have multiple workstations, we started checking a member’s account status as they came through the front door. As computer capabilities increased in the 1980s and 1990s, we added lots of functions and features, but the focus remained on making our operations more efficient by streamlining the business aspects of the club.
In the 1980s, we began using the computer in the fitness side of the business, offering computer-generated Health Risk Appraisals, Fitness Assessments and Exercise Prescriptions. The focus of these systems was on educating the member and adding “value” to their membership by delivering something they could hold in their hands.
In the 1990s, our industry started applying technology to the workout equipment, making smart exercise machines and building networked systems that allowed members to record their workouts and have machines “remember” what workout level and exercise routines they were using. Since the late 1990s, there really hasn’t been much new in the application of technology to our industry. We’ve made improvements on the themes: club management systems have more capabilities and reach further down into the core of the business; we now use the Web to deliver more information to members than they can ever absorb, and exercise equipment is more intelligent, safer, and more complex.
Today, club management systems typically include online access to members’ accounts and other “memberfacing” modules as well as club kiosks for class registration and easy retrieval of club information. The focus of many of these recent improvements has been to increase the reach of club operators outside the four walls of the clubs, and to enhance the member experience.
What’s next? We will continue to improve the things we know. Club management systems will continue to enhance the club’s ability to operate effectively and efficiently. We will see significant extensions in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) aspects of these systems. CRM improvements will allow management to more easily look at buying patterns, membership trends, and customer activity in order to make better, more informed marketing and promotion decisions. CRM at the individual member level will allow us to proactively monitor member activity, and work to connect members to our club. Exercise machines are moving toward simplicity, making it easier for the member to use the machines the way they want to.
As an industry, we continue to focus on our ability to retain customers. We are working to understand how we need to relate with our members so that they will continue to use us and pay for our services. And, we are beginning to realize that the core requirement for that to happen is for us to connect with our prospects and members in as many different ways as possible. IHRSA recently released a research report which indicated that 25- to 35-year-olds were most likely to join a club. At the same time, the report indicated that this same group was most dissatisfied with the sales process and sales tactics employed by club operators. The days of the glassenclosed sales advisor’s room are coming to an end. Today’s 30-year-old is a tech-savvy and well-informed consumer who is looking at alternative purchasing systems like online membership wizards that sit on a club website, or fitness Blogs which highlight how one club meets their exercise goals and interests more than another.
What technologies are on the horizon that will impact your club? Sometime in the next few years, we may see voice recognition finally get to the point where your members can really tell the exercise machine what they want. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) proximity membership cards and tags may reach mainstream and allow you to control and monitor access to your facility in new and innovative ways. But mostly, the next five years will be a time of continued refinement of our existing approaches, making technology easier to use; tailoring it more closely to the needs of your organization, and continuing to explore ways to use technology to allow you to serve your members better. The bottom line for all of us in the industry is a straightforward truth: We will only remain in business if the products and services we deliver allow our clients to acquire and retain members.
Frank Anderson is the Vice President of Technology and Development of KI Software. He can be contacted at 800.443.0599, or by email at FAnderson@kiesolutions.com.
