features
Service & maintenance: Up & running
How much is broken equipment costing your club? Kath Hudson reports on cloud-based technology that can be used to reduce downtime and keep members happy
As a gym user, it’s annoying to see an ‘out of action’ notice on the same piece of equipment for days, even weeks; as a health club operator, keeping on top of repairs and maintenance can be a headache.
Without surveying your members, it’s hard to put a price on how much revenue broken equipment costs your club, but suffice to say, to neglect it is false economy. Personally I know many people who’ve left clubs because they’re fed up with equipment taking too long to be fixed. This morning, I myself felt disgruntled when I was planning a cycle and there were no bikes working at my gym. The staff are irritatingly vague about when they’ll be working again, and I’ve advised my cycling-mad husband to hold off his membership until the equipment’s repaired.
In a world where customers are ever-more savvy and want value for money, keeping on top of repairs is vital. If members have flagging commitment and find they can’t do their workout because of kit problems, they’re halfway to becoming a lapsed member. Equally, given that many people go to the gym to relieve frustration, the last thing the club should be doing is adding to them.
However, thanks to the proliferation of new web- and cloud-based technologies, it’s become much simpler to report problems, chart progress in the repairs – handy for members who complain – and plan maintenance to avoid breakdowns in the first place. And all this from a quick glance at an iPad, computer or phone, meaning you don’t even need to be on-site to be on top of repairs. No excuses.
CLUB VITALS
Club Vitals offers a cloud-based system for maintaining equipment. Very simply, it involves a sticker being placed on equipment which has a number and a QR code. If there’s an issue with the equipment, staff can log into the cloud-based account to report the number and a brief statement, or scan the QR code. Once the fault has been reported, an engineer is swiftly informed so it reduces the downtime. A preventative maintenance module has also been added recently, to plan maintenance or cleaning.
According to Skye Kaiss, president of Club Vitals, the advantages are that it saves time: equipment is mended quicker, keeping members happy. As all the records of each piece of equipment are kept in one place, including warranty and history, there’s also never a problem with lost communication, records are quick and easy to pull up, and it’s easy to spot if one piece of equipment has a history of problems. As it’s cloud-based, fire, theft or server crashes aren’t a threat.
“Some of our clients have reported over 1,000 maintenance issues a year. Without Club Vitals, this would certainly not happen and, since these problems would not have been communicated, they would not have been fixed,” says Kaiss. “Equipment downtime, along with facility cleanliness, is one key reasons why members stay or leave.”
PRECOR
Precor’s cloud-based Preva Business Suite provides real-time status updates on CV equipment, telling the operator if the machines are in use or idle, if a service is required, or if an inspection is needed because the machine has not been used for more than 30 minutes in any 72-hour period – suggesting something might be wrong with it.
Operators can run reports showing daily use of equipment, cumulative use, and trends by time. The system also provides essential information about the products, such as serial numbers and lifetime usage data.
The cumulative use report, showing total lifetime use of any machine in the gym, can help operators prolong the life of their kit by swapping stations that are continually used for those in less popular positions: for example, one US gym found end treadmills were used far more than those in the middle of the row.
The daily report offers operational and marketing benefits too, says Brent Brooks, VP of networked fitness at Precor: “Operators can establish a picture of their quiet periods and create targeted campaigns to attract more members during those times, such as corporate members or retired groups.
“It can also help inform purchasing decisions. For example, if 100 per cent of the treadmills are being used during peak times, they could increase the number of units available. Alternatively, they could offer training sessions or challenges on some of the less busy equipment, to encourage usage and variety in their members’ workouts.”
FITNESSEMS
“Those using FitnessEMS have found the repair process is speeded up by 40 per cent, as operators can immediately see when issues are occurring, as well as what’s being done to the correct the problem,” says Rusty Hosea, managing director of marketing and project management at FitnessEMS. “Also, technicians can learn from previous repair history through complaint/resolution searches.”
The cloud-based nature of the system allows FitnessEMS to add updates and functionality behind the scenes, with no interruption to the operator. A comprehensive maintenance schedule module has recently been added, which includes a real-time checklist for technicians and auto-emailed PDF reporting for managers. An entry-level product with less functionality is available for smaller clubs, personal training studios and apartment complex gyms.
“Depending on the health club operation, FitnessEMS can decrease equipment downtime by 50 per cent. A typical repair lifecycle for a treadmill belt and deck is seven days, but FitnessEMS reduces this to four days or fewer,” says Hosea. “This means fewer members are exposed to broken-down equipment, which is important when around 3 per cent of total attrition is equipment-related.
“We also offer materials and advice to help clubs. Managers may find themselves spending less than five minutes a day on maintenance issues.”
LIFE FITNESS
Discover cardio products from Life Fitness now integrate with its LFconnect technology, a cloud-based solution that gives clubs access to free asset management, and vital data on the usage of the equipment.
By logging on to LFconnect.com, managers can accurately monitor usage of their equipment and generate reports anywhere, anytime, about a variety of measures such as how many hours the equipment has been used, total distance, number of workouts, belt hours, belt distance and life hours. This real-time information can be accessed remotely by Life Fitness technicians and head office.
“The diagnostics, together with our dedicated service call systems and performance reports, ensure our technicians can get to the bottom of any underlying issues,” says Margaret Vane, UK service manager at Life Fitness. “This wealth of data is used to create bespoke maintenance programmes or service interventions for customers, which help prevent future issues.”
SERVICESPORT
Servicesport operates an online estate management system which allows customers to see a ‘live time’ database of their fitness equipment across multiple sites, along with service history, redeployment history, condition, usage, age, location, warranty status, market value and cost to refurbish.
The system allows operators to run summary reports, dashboards, league tables and charts so the data can be filtered into meaningful information. Equipment breakdowns can be reported, and videos or photographs of faults uploaded, to improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis. Progress on repairs and services can be tracked live, so clubs know when an engineer is coming.
“The main benefit is knowledge,” says Susie Marriott, commercial director at Servicesport. “Knowing what you have, where it is, what it’s worth, whether it’s in good or bad condition and how much investment is required to bring it up to a uniform standard allows our customers to plan the largest of estates very simply.”
Servicesport is now working with GYMetrix to identify, across an operator’s estate, which gyms are short of kit and which have an excess. This helps operators optimise their assets by moving equipment between gyms.
