The ABC’s of Management Software, Part 3

Every business strives to boast the strongest bottom line possible. But many club operators fail to realize the impact club management software (CMS) can have on their club’s success.

“Having a CMS partner that understands the direction of the facility’s owners can have a huge impact on the financial success,” said Bob Surface, the vice president of sales for ABC Financial. “The right CMS can provide clear, timely data to accurately track key metrics so that the staff can take actions to ensure consistent performance.”

With this in mind, following are three ways club operators can improve their bottom line through CMS:

Pick the Right Partner

According to Surface, a great CMS partner is one that can have a positive impact on a club’s day-to-day operations, in addition to provide feedback and recommendations that ultimately impact financial success.

“A great CMS partner should create efficiency in your business processes to improve top-line revenue and decrease the cost to operate,” added Surface.

Features of a great CMS partner should include:

• Automated delinquency follow-up processes.
• Paperless enrollment processes designed to minimize risk of data entry errors and speed up the sign-up process.
• Alerting staff at check-in when members are past due, and when the credit/debit card they use for dues payments is expiring.
• Online, app, and kiosk member self-service options to reduce the workload for staff (while meeting the expectations of today’s consumers).

In addition, your CMS should also provide reporting capabilities to help make fast business decisions, including the ability to get key data, automated reporting capabilities, and access to dashboarding and KPI data for front-line employees — which leads us to the next strategy.

Identify the Right Reports

Once you’ve secured a great CMS partner, the next step to improving your bottom line involves identifying the right reports.

According to Surface, the following reports can be helpful for operators to pay attention to surrounding their bottom line:

• Attrition report: Provides a clear understanding of how many members are not being drafted and for what reasons.
• Total sales report: Number of new members added.
• Expiring paid-in-full member report.  
• Alerted check-in: Number of members that utilize the club without fixing their past-due invoices.
• Number of billing invoices available to collect versus total number of billing invoices collected.
• Profit center revenue generation reports: Overall daily revenue for the facility.
• Commission reports.
• Total payroll reports.

Utilize Your Resources

According to Surface, the last step to improving your bottom line through CMS involves using your software’s capabilities to their fullest extent.

“Take the time to learn the CMS and the functionality,” continued Surface. “The club owners or management teams that have a better understanding of the full capabilities of the CMS can fully leverage the CMS to assist in their business. Leverage the CMS resources to assist in gaining the full functionality of the platform and insight into industry trends.”

By utilizing these three strategies, your club will be one step closer to a stronger bottom line.

“The right CMS provides the tools needed to create and maintain a process-driven club operation, which creates consistency of growth and opportunities for staff and club owners,” said Surface.

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This article is brought to you by ABC Financial. For more information on how ABC Financial can help your business’ bottom line, email Bob Surface at bob.surface@abcfinancial.com, or visit http://www.abcfinancial.com/.