Launceston Leisure and Aquatic Centre’s system upgrade saves time and boosts group fitness

The switch to a more modern facility management system at the Launceston Leisure and Aquatic Centre has already led to a 25% reduction in administration time, with potential for more dramatic results when the software’s full capabilities are unleashed this year.

The Centre - the largest community facility in the City of Launceston - hosts more than 500,000 visitors per year who make use of its eight pools and multiple areas for other fitness, recreation and sport activities.

Switching to Jonas Leisure’s Envibe software in April – replacing a system that had been in place for 15 years - Mark Jeffrey, the Centre’s Administration and Customer Service Coordinator, said there was some trepidation when they made the change.

Jeffrey explained “it's been phenomenal. I couldn't be happier - it’s what I hoped for and more.

“The team at Jonas Leisure have been brilliant, I can't speak highly enough of them. The personalised approach they’ve got certainly allayed any fears that I had and made it a lot easier for me to sell to our higher ups at council - the ones who signed the cheques.”

Jeffrey advised that although Envibe’s full functionality is still being implemented, it has already made a huge impact, noting “we're slowly but surely turning on more and more features. The staff rave about it and most of our members rave about it too.

“We've done a systematic rollout of the things we need and now we’re fully exploring Envibe’s online capabilities plus what it can deliver in terms of reporting and trigger messaging, which is making everyone's jobs a lot easier.”

Jeffrey said the new software’s biggest impact has been on the time it takes to train new staff members to use their systems. It used to require 10 ‘buddy-system’ shifts to train staff on the old system, whereas training new staff to use Envibe requires just three sessions with a buddy, plus the standard induction training.

Envibe has cut down administration time by up to 25% compared to the Centre’s old system, which Jeffrey said had been “massive”, noting “we have one permanent staff member to handle all the bookings who used to struggle to get her job done on the old system over her workday. Now she finds herself with an hour of free time and I've got to give her some other things to do.

“Our guys at the front counter are quite often complaining to me now that they don't have enough to do, because memberships and things that used to take them longer to do, they can do very quickly, very simply, and it'll get even simpler when we go to paperless.”

Jeffrey said some of the Centre’s older client base had been resistant to changing from using the previous system, but the ease of online access to the centre’s 80 group-fitness classes had changed their minds.

He added “now they can see the whole range of classes available, whereas our previous system would only show the class they choose to look at.”

This, coupled with Envibe’s ability to allow the centre’s group fitness classes to be booked up to 23 hours in advance rather than just two hours, had delivered an immediate boost in attendance numbers, with Jeffrey advising “we’ve gone from an average of 70% occupancy in our group fitness classes to 94%.”

Jeffrey said managing the Centre's aquatic and gym equipment shop using the old system was clunky and unwieldy, but Envibe had made it easy. Previously stocktake figures were inaccurate - it was impossible to delete stock items and staff had to create a new stock order for every new barcode so the inventory list became a “huge beast”.

Now he sees that “when we do our stocktakes now, we get a very clear understanding of pilferage or returns and things like that. That in itself has created a 10% improvement in our profitability across the shop."

Whereas it used to take two-and-a-half days to upload a delivery of fresh stock items it now only takes half a day with Envibe.

With refurbishment projects on the horizon and a $150,000 upgrade of gym equipment due this year, Jeffrey goes on to say that Envibe’s ability to save time and money and generate helpful reports to provide insights and measure progress was valuable, stating “the reporting that we can get back to council is a lot more detailed than we’re used to, which satisfies their need for knowledge - including granular details about attendance demographics - which is extremely helpful.

“We could get some of that out of the old system, but it was like pulling teeth.”

Jeffrey said he “cannot wait” to use Envibe to go completely paperless, once he has had time to create some well-crafted communications to support the rollout.

The Centre also plans to harness data from Envibe’s reports to tweak its class programming to best meet the needs of the various demographics it welcomes.

He concludes “I'm really keen for us to use the reporting capabilities of the system a lot more moving forward because we've just scraped the surface and I know the system can do a whole heap more.”

Click here to contact Envibe/Jonas Leisure via their Australasian Leisure Management Supplier Directory entry.

Images: Pools and fitness at the Launceston Leisure and Aquatic Centre. Credit: City of Launceston.