The Isle of Wight is England’s largest island, situated three miles off the coast of Hampshire.
The island has a population of 140,000 residents who regularly use facilities on the island's three leisure centres - comprising swimming pools, gyms and exercise classes, health suites, sports halls and theatres.
Health and fitness plays a large role in the council’s service provision. There is an increased emphasis on exercise due to the mental and physical health benefits it gives residents, in turn relieving the burden on other areas of public service such as healthcare, further downstream. With this in mind there is an aim to ensure leisure facilities are used by as many people as possible.
The Isle of Wight has been an Omnico Group customer since 2001. Until May 2012 they were using an early software release, Clarity Flex. Whilst the working relationship with Omnico was very good and the software platform was reliable, the Isle of Wight Council wanted to upgrade to the latest Leisure suite to benefit from new features and functions that would lead to further efficiencies for staff and end users alike. This would allow them to add customers without having to add to the administrative workforce.
Separately, the Isle of Wight Council upgraded leisure facilities, including a major refurbishment of its three leisure centres, as part of a multi-million pound investment in leisure across the island.
“The software upgrade requirement coincided with a huge investment from the council to the facilities on the island. The council expected an increased footfall to leisure facilities and the software upgrade would support that,” explained Lawrence Edmonston, Leisure Facilities Manager at the Isle of Wight Council.
“We had worked with Omnico Group for over a decade and were very happy with the software but we wanted to access the latest functionality that better reflected the way in which our customers want to use and book our services. We found, people increasingly booked their appointments on the go, either on mobile or online - so we wanted to offer these options and make booking as simple as possible so that customers would find it intuitive. As a by-product of this self-service we also naturally reduced the administrative burden on our reception staff."
The Isle of Wight moved onto Clarity Live in early 2012, taking on further modules from then until the present day. Currently, Clarity Live is used for internet bookings and cancellations – giving the power to customers to choose and book appointments to get the service they want, when they want it.
Lawrence comments: "The system is integrated with both self-service kiosks and reception, which allow leisure facility employees to efficiently and effectively coordinate diaries and resources. Also, the Clarity Live software was easily linked up with third parties, like gym management software Pulse. Having one system across the estate makes it easier to train and support customers and staff.”
Since going live, 3,000 online bookings a month have been made, representing around a third of the total of all bookings at the island's three leisure centres and the council continues to extend its relationship with Omnico Group adding the Clarity Theatre module after the initial roll-out to facilitate online booking for theatre sales, and now adding Clarity Swim – which is an intuitive tool for progress feedback on swimming lessons as well as management of classes and payment.
Lawrence continues: “The biggest success we’ve seen is with bookings and cancellations plus the self-service kiosks. We have freed up staff, who can allocate their time to more important tasks.
“Clarity Live is also Microsoft Windows-based so most of the peripherals that work on Windows, also work on Clarity. There is scope to add more functionality and continually innovate to as our residents needs grow and change.”