Being a gym owner is far more than just owning a gym and helping your customers reach their health goals. It’s being an accountant, a manager, a marketer, an operations expert and a whole lot more.
Most owners of fitness startups quickly realise that they need to find more efficient ways to manage their responsibilities. After all, the success of the business depends on it.
A simple solution to most of these hurdles is by getting yourself set up with robust gym management software, also known as a CRM system.
Not convinced yet? Let us break down three reasons why your club should consider signing up for member management software.
It keeps everything in one place.
Gyms that operate without management software in place will typically have different information stored in different places. A spreadsheet to manage members and their payments, a diary to manage the staff rota and another spreadsheet to manage their activity bookings. Quite often this results in confusion and disorganisation, especially when multiple staff are involved in running the club.
Good club management software allows you to keep everything in one place: from overall member management and payment processing to staff organising and stock management. Features and benefits will vary between gym software providers, but ClubRight (as well as ProRight and soon to be ProRight+) offers unlimited users, meaning every single member of staff can have their own login to the system with different access levels so that private business information remains secure.
It allows you to sell online with no extra effort.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses in the fitness industry are handling less cash or have gone completely cashless. Without gym software, you’ll be manually reconciling your online payments between your payments portal and your spreadsheet; a process that can take hours if you have a large membership base.
Gym software helps you to bridge the gap between receiving payment and ticking off that customer as having paid. Software providers that have a solid integration with a reputable payment provider eliminate the need to manually reconcile those online payments. To see a good example of what we’re talking about, you can click here.
Having online payments connected with your gym software also means that potential customers can browse your offering and make purchases 24/7 – so you can effectively make money while you sleep!
It future-proofs your business.
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that gyms need to be ready to adapt. It was reported that gyms in Great Britain lost around £3.1bn as a result of the national lockdowns that prevented them from opening in the last eighteen months. As a result, independent gym owners should consider how they can future-proof their businesses. Having reliable gym software in place allows for a more robust business model and even provides more growth opportunities.
For example, when the pandemic hit in March 2020, we released a brand new OnDemand content feature to help our customers stay afloat as well as an integration with Zoom that allowed instructors to hold their classes remotely. Our CEO is a former gym owner himself, so helping gyms to survive and supporting independent gym owners is in our blood.
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In summary, there are plenty of benefits to using a member management system at your club. By making sure that internal operations are running seamlessly, you’ll have even more opportunities to delight your members and grow a sustainable business that allows you to fulfil your passion – without the admin headache.
Gym software providers’ solutions typically vary in value and service level, so be sure to do your research and make sure the company that you sign up with is right for you. Just because you’re paying a large sum of money for the service doesn’t always guarantee quality.
ClubRight is an end-to-end solution that takes care of everything, from marketing automation (in our ProRight package) and access control to class bookings and selling online; plus a whole lot more.
It doesn’t stop there either. ClubRight has been created by people with first-hand experience in running a gym. When you work with us, you’ll be speaking to the people that understand the day-to-day challenges of owning a business in the health and fitness industry.
Give us a call today on +44 (0)203 884 9777 or book a free online demo with one of our product experts.
