The number of gym memberships has significantly increased over the past decade. In 1998, 29.5 million Americans belonged to a gym and in 2010 that number rose to 40 million and despite the recession hitting most households, Americans did not cut gym membership.
That being said, it’s important to be prepared for the ongoing growth of your facility. Staying organized by tracking all invoicing, payments, payroll, and commissions is essential in order to keep expanding and remain successful. Part of accomplishing this is making sure you have a ‘one-stop-shop.’ Software that takes care of all of this for you and makes it simple to pull reports will free up time to connect with customers individually.
Functions that good software should perform include:
- Back office management
- Front desk management
- Billing and payment processing
- Scheduling and activity management
- Marketing and customer relationship management
- Financial and demographic reporting
With these capabilities at your fingertips, business owners will be able to increase both revenue and productivity. It’s also especially important that the software be a web hosted service as this eliminates the hassle of having to install hardware or software onto the computer. With Software as a Service (SaaS), security and privacy are of utmost importance. When considering SaaS, asking the right questions will ensure that your data is safe. A few questions to be answered before choosing software include:
- Is your production environment housed in a state-of-the-art hosting facility?
- What are the security arrangements for the facility? Are they in place 24/7/365?
- What type of infrastructure do you host data on? Are there virus protection arrangements in-place?
- Do you utilize an independent third party to run periodic external and internal vulnerability scans?
- How often do you back up data, and where are they stored?
- What level of data encryption is utilized to protect website transactions?
- What is your privacy policy?
Lastly, it’s a good thing that the health and fitness industry is doing well and is projected to continue to do so; just make sure your business is ready to keep up!
Stay posted for more ideas on long-term success for your business.