Stockport Sports Trust boosts membership by 11,000 and partners with Legend Club Management Systems to manage growth
- Stockport Sports Trust improves IT infrastructure, direct debit management and online member services to build on remarkable recent success in increased membership -
Stockport Sports Trust, a not-for-profit Sport, Health and Leisure Trust in the North West, has partnered with Legend Club Management Systems, the supplier of leading leisure management software for public, private and educational leisure facilities across the UK, to provide CRM systems and BACS bureau services for their 13 leisure centres.
Stockport Sports Trust is one of the most successful leisure trusts in the UK, and has grown by approximately 11,000 members over the past four years, boosting surplus’s by a remarkable 800% in the process. Since adding the Legend software and associated BACS services, direct debit management has improved substantially, such that year-on-year direct debit income is up 19% and rejections have halved.
Due to continued rapid growth, Stockport Sports Trust needed a system that was able to support and keep up with the growing business. The previous system did not offer the functionality required, such as instant and flexible report production, direct debit tracking and utility consumption monitoring, and with the previous software requiring time-consuming weekly updates in order to continue operation, Stockport was continually facing disruption in day-to-day administration.
The partnership with Legend provides Stockport Sports Trust with a CRM solution that enables their 13 centres to readily record and analyse data on individual members’ interactions, including data on which club a member is attending, which classes or specific facilities are proving popular, overall frequency of use and payment schedules. Legend also brings powerful self-service functions to take the pressure off front desk and sales by driving web bookings, courses enrolment and join online web services.
In addition, Stockport Sports Trust is also implementing Legend’s Vision Server KPI reporting solution which records, analyses and tracks a facilities’ utilities consumption, employee activity and cashflow. Through the software, the various centres have the ability to closely track and monitor their utilities expenditure, reducing carbon footprint, set role-based performance targets for employees and feed the marketing activity with up-to-date statistics.
Alongside these products, Stockport is also using the Legend BACS Bureau Service, an outsourced back office service which provides DD BACS processing, credit control win-back campaigns and debt recovery and closely monitors direct debits and payments. Since using the BACS bureau service Stockport has seen a 19% rise in Direct Debit Income and a 50% reduction in Direct Debit rejections through a more effective administration process and rise in membership numbers.
Malcolm McPhail, Chief Executive Officer at Stockport Sports Trust comments, “The growth which we have experienced here at Stockport Sports Trust has clearly been dramatic and trend-bucking. Stockport is also the seventh best trading partner in the UK as ranked by Plimsoll Report. This rapidly made us realise that we needed a leisure management system that would support us more efficiently and with greater functionality. With a far larger membership, the small inconveniences we used to be able to persevere with rapidly became intolerable, and so we needed to find a partner who could help us grow yet further, and future proof the business as we have two new large sites opening shortly.”
McPhail continues, “Through partnering with Legend, we are able to offer our centres an infrastructure which not only reduces day-to-day administration but also enables our teams to directly influence the growth and management of our centres. This has already been demonstrated by the superb results that we have seen through the implementation of Legend’s BACS Bureau Service – a 19% rise in Direct Debit income and a halving of Direct Debit failures are astonishing results.”
McPhail continues, “All of the results that we have seen from the partnership so far have been really strong indicators of where our business is going in the future – we are looking forward to expanding the partnership further still and together we expect Stockport Sports Trust to grow almost beyond recognition.”
Legend is the club management solution of choice for a rapidly growing list of public leisure centre operators in the UK, such as Serco Leisure, Greenwich Leisure, Nexus Community, Parkwood Leisure, Stockport Sports Trust and Oldham Community Leisure Trust. Legend also supports a growing number of universities and colleges and serves a substantial list of private health club operators, the largest of which is the 82-site L.A Fitness.
Iain HayesCustomer Service Manager
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Graham StoneGroup IT Manager
LA FitnessThe rollout of Legend has seen major improvements in productivity and significant cost savings across our group of 88 clubs.
Keith ThomasManaging Director
Serco LeisureThe streamlining of our business processes has seen time and cost savings, modernising the way our 70 local leisure centres are run.
Malcolm McPhailChief Executive
Life LeisureWith rapid growth the small inconveniences became intolerable. Legend is the partner who can best support our impressive growth.
Steve BradleyManaging Director
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Mike TaitAssistant Chief Executive
OCLRollout was completed in a short time scale, within ten weeks. Legend has allowed us to improve the quality of our data & business processes.
Peter DysonManaging Director
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