The Shire of Donnybrook Balingup lies not in the counties of England or on the pages of Tolkien but around 220 km south of Perth, Western Australia. It’s a rural area with a population a smidge over 6,000 and a high proportion of families and older residents. In a place like Donnybrook, where communication is done mainly through word of mouth and the local paper, the local recreation centre has become a hub and a vital meeting point for many.
In the past the recreation centre was run using paper-based systems, but times are a changing in the Shire. Donnybrook Recreation Centre has recently made the shift to Envibe leisure management software, replacing its older systems and manual membership management processes with something much more modern. The results speak for themselves.
“It’s a community rec centre, so it needs to be there for the community,” says Simon Peppler, Donnybrook Recreation Centre Manager.
“With the help of Envibe we have put things online and made it so much more accessible to people, whether they are looking to book in for classes from their smartphones or want to keep track of what classes are happening at the centre through the online customer portal.”
The benefits of Envibe have been especially apparent when it comes to group fitness classes at the recreation centre, which are now much better attended.
“Before we would print out a weekly timetable and share it on social media, but it was often changing during the week. Now that all the classes are on Envibe people can see live information; it’s just a case of going to the portal and seeing when the classes are coming up or if any are cancelled,” Simon says.
“Envibe’s text messaging function is so much quicker, so much more personal, and we can maintain a really high level of communication with the community. Many of our morning group fitness classes have increased from two or three per group, up to eight or nine.”
In a community where a healthy percentage of the population is over the age of 55, the text messaging functionality comes in handy for reaching those who may not use the internet as regularly as younger urban folk.
“Our Strength for Life programme is an over 65 group who don’t use the internet that much, but they’ve all got mobile phones,” Simon says. “Beforehand, it was really hard to get hold of anybody if we had to cancel a class because an instructor was ill, but with Envibe, I can send out a single text message to let everyone know the class isn’t on, and they’re all very happy with that.”
With staffing an ongoing concern in the leisure sector, Envibe has allowed the centre to optimise certain processes and re-allocate staff hours to places of greater benefit, such as better programming.
“Previously, the swim school programme was all done manually, so it took a huge effort from staff to work out where the kids were going at which times of the day. With the introduction of Envibe, we were able to flip that around and come up with a timetable for each different stage that allows people to enrol online.”
The swim school levels and timetable was put online using Envibe and parents were able to book in and pay to enrol their children into the most appropriate class for their current skill and confidence level, Simon says.
“We noticed within the first few days, we took around $10,000 of bookings online, rather than at the front desk, and we weren’t having to enrol people ourselves or make so many follow up calls.”
The data and analytics functionality offered by Envibe is another strong point and is key for Simon when reporting to his higher ups, he says.
“I have to make quarterly reports, and that was all going into an Excel spreadsheet in the past. Now, when it comes to reporting, you just go to the reporting feature and pull out the information that you need. It’s so much quicker, so much easier, and there’s so much more information – we’ve got demographics, we’ve got age, we’ve got location data on where people are coming from.”
Simon is excited about the future of Donnybrook Recreation Centre, including the gym, which will soon be moving to 24-hour accessibility.
“When the gym goes 24 hours, we are hoping to link that with Envibe, which would then be linked with our security system. That’s a huge one for us as it will open the gym to more users. Some people are early risers, some people fly in and fly out for work, and some keep difficult hours. It’s just that additional option for people and the community as a whole.”
