When Federation Council approved a new $10.2 million community aquatic centre, those behind the project knew they would need to get their leisure management software systems right as well.
Offering a 50m outdoor pool, 25m indoor pool, aquatic program pool, kids’ splash park, on-site café and swim shop, the new Corowa Aquatic Centre is a significant community asset.
It’s easily the largest aquatic centre managed by the council and planners knew a leading-edge leisure management system would improve the experience of visitors, as well as the stress-levels of staff working hard to provide the best possible experience.
Federation Council IT Support Officer Michael Febvre said the council decided on Jonas Leisure’s Envibe software because of its functionality, modern interface, and thorough onboarding and support processes.
Making leisure administration simpler
“Introducing Envibe at Corowa has been seamless,” he says. “It makes complicated processes easy and it’s very intuitive – you can be setting things up in one part of the system and helpful links make it easy to ‘follow the bouncing ball’ through to other areas you might need to consider.”
More than 2,000 people have visited Corowa Aquatic Centre since it officially opened its doors in April. Michael says the Envibe system has made it easy for staff to sign up new members and manage group fitness classes as well as point of sale.
Envibe’s built-in reporting tools have also been helpful, helping staff to identify trends early. Michael says aquarobics classes at Corowa Aquatic Centre have been in particularly hot demand, with many of the riverside town’s residents leaping at the opportunity to experience the remedial health benefits the classes can provide.
Easy communication with the community
“The other huge benefit we are seeing from Envibe, and that we’d like to lean more into, is the ability to communicate easily with our customers.”
The software includes built-in tools that make it simple to send emails or SMS messages to members and course participants when updates are required. This can include messages about schedule changes, or ‘trigger messages’ that can be set up to send automatically in different situations – such as when a member first signs up for a course, or when the credit card they have saved in the system is about to expire.
“If something happened at our other facilities in previous years people could end up coming to the pool and being disappointed because it was harder for us to get the message out.”
Plans for the future
Michael says facility staff are continuing to learn the ins and outs of Envibe and are looking forward to harnessing more of its functionality in future. Learn to Swim classes will start at Corowa Aquatic Centre in Term 3 and the facility’s splash park would be a star attraction when the weather warms up for summer, he said.
“Everyone is happy. From what I’ve seen people come into the facility and they are really impressed. From the moment they scan in and the gates open, the whole experience is really positive.”
Michael says the success of Envibe at Corowa Aquatic Centre has Federation Council to explore the possibility introducing the system at some of its other recreation facilities, including the Howlong Swimming Pool.
“Moving from a more manual paper-based system to Envibe is massive. It seemed daunting at the start, but Envibe has made the process easy.”
