Tennis Clubs in 2021: Re-Launch, Develop & Prosper
As 2020 draws to a close, it’s perhaps a good time to pause for a brief moment of reflection. There is no doubt that the past year has been a testing and challenging time for clubs and members on various levels.. personal, social, business. While Covid remains a serious threat in our communities, we take tremendous encouragement from the resolve shown by members and the responsible leadership shown by club management in adapting to restrictions and navigating safe journeys to ensure the health of members and the survival of clubs.
Of course, the most encouraging news in recent weeks has been the various announcements about forthcoming vaccines. This provides us all with hope and enables our clubs to plan with a more positive outlook. While 2020 has in ways been a lost year, perhaps during 2021 we will all have the opportunity to make up for lost time.
Throughout 2020 Smart Club Solutions, working closely with our Court Booking partners ClubManager365.com, adapted our solutions and applications to the various changing scenarios which unfolded for clubs in the Covid era. Many of our features had an important role in ensuring clubs met recommended guidelines and protocols for social distancing and responsible membership engagement.
During the year ahead we will be expanding our solutions still further to help our Tennis clubs in Ireland and England to re-launch, develop and prosper. The summary below provides additional detail on some of the main features and some new features coming soon.
* Smart Cloud for Member Online Payments & Booking: a wealth of online functionality for members. Members can register online selecting whether to pay in full or in monthly instalments, update their contact details, view and pay club invoices, top-up their smart card balance for use at tills and lighting control, view member only club documentation, book and pay for their place at forthcoming scheduled events such as training camps, publish their contact details for other members to view to facilitate matches and more. Importantly, assigning a Head of Family can give parents the power to carry out many of the areas above on behalf of their children. Online transaction rates start from as low as 1% + 20c.
* Club Donor: This recent feature enables clubs to raise funds by inviting members to subscribe to monthly draws and promotions. Members sign up once and payments are collected on an ongoing basis
* Smart Membership Management: effective membership management, whether at the club or working remotely from home. Remote member administration, communications by SMS text message / email /letter, invoicing, online payment processing (including new Quick Pay link included within body of email), management reporting.
* Coaching Management: Coaches are empowered to create and schedule coaching sessions for specific groups of individuals so only those individuals will see those events in the Cloud. Coaches can move players between groups, organise classes, communicate with players, mark-up attendance on their phone and more.
* Online Court Booking & Management: we continue to work closely with our dedicated Court Booking integration partner, ClubManager365. In addition to providing comprehensive and tailored court booking solutions, their system also includes leagues and ladders management. Recent features facilitate rules such as singles only, staggering / overlapping court time allocations, introducing gaps in the booking schedule, compulsory naming of both players in the system at the time of booking, and more. This enables clubs to implement strict and controlled scheduling, minimise contact and interaction between players on different courts, and importantly, provide detailed reporting of who is/was court at particular dates and times for contact traceability. Combined with our contactless Access Control, Lighting Control and Coaching/Event Management, it helps deliver a comprehensive COURT MANAGEMENT SOLUTION.
* Contactless Cards and Fobs for Tills, Access Control and Lighting Control: Our contactless cards and fobs, combined with prepaid policies, reduce the need for cash handling, hand-to-hand transactions and use of key pads for access or tokens for lighting control.
* Access Control and Smart Reception modules also allow for accurate reporting of member attendance and track and trace. In the coming weeks, cards will also be able to be used to ‘check in’ against court bookings.
* Ecommerce Added to EPOS & Stock Control: Early 2021 will see the release of new EPOS and Stock Control upgrade. In addition to updating the tills interface and features, we will also be adding ecommerce so our clubs will be able to sell club kit, etc. online while having integrated stock control with any on-site club shop.
In summary, we have worked with Tennis Clubs across Ireland for almost 15 years and we continue to innovate and diversify our offering to deliver on club and member expectations.
We look forward to continuing to work in partnership with our clubs during 2021. We thank all our clubs for their custom during the last challenging year and very much look forward to the year ahead!