As we introduce our latest accessory for Spectrum^NG, the Access Control System (ACS) software application, we felt it would be a suitable time to share what we believe is important when it comes to managing access to your health club, wellness center, or recreation facility.

Provide a Better Customer Service Experience

There’s nothing worse than members feeling disgruntled as soon as they step inside the building. We believe you can set the right tone by making the member check-in process seamless and lightning fast. If one of your employees could scan or swipe a member’s card and open a door or gate more quickly than your ACS, it’s not worth it. Your ACS should provide a better customer service experience for your member, not a worse one.

Uphold Membership Agreements

Many health clubs, wellness centers, and recreation facilities offer multiple membership options with different prices. These options often vary by which areas of the facility a member can access or by the number of days a member can use the club each week.

While managing entrance points is about boosting security in your facility and knowing who’s where, we think an ACS can (and should) do a whole lot more.

Your ACS should help you uphold the access and usage options of your memberships and protect the integrity of your agreements. It’s vital for your ACS to communicate with your management software so that it can grant or deny entry based on the most up-to-date member information.

Free Up Time

An ACS should be reliable, consistent, and hands-free so that you never have to waste valuable time with maintenance or follow-up tasks. An ACS that synchronizes access activity with your management software means less administrative responsibility and better efficiency. After installation, an ACS should be able to do its job without help, so you can do yours.

Our Solution

With these considerations in mind, we’ve developed a flexible solution for our Spectrum^NG customers that functions from start to finish in milliseconds. With our ACS, you can:

          ·          Convert an unlimited number of doors, turnstiles, and gates into secure access points for your facility.

          ·          Enforce facility access and usage rules based on membership type.

          ·          Integrate access activity with Spectrum^NG’s Front Desk Check-In module.

          ·          Manually open an access point and monitor access point activity from any computer in your facility using the ACS Viewer.

Find out more about CSI Software’s Access Control System (http://www.csisoftwareusa.com/COOLTOOLS/access-control-system.php).

Despite the slightly lower attendance from years past, this year’s Summit was every bit as successful, if not more so, than the previous two!

We made several changes in the format of the Summit for this year, starting with moving it to Thursday and Friday from the Tuesday and Wednesday that it was held on previously. This allowed us to hold the Spectrum NG Boot Camp before The Summit on Wednesday. In doing this, we were able to give people who had never seen Spectrum NG an introduction to the software before they attended the more advanced and module-specific breakout sessions at The Summit itself.

After a very productive and informative Boot Camp, the conference officially opened with a welcome reception at The Houstonian’s Garden Pool on Wednesday evening. The weather was a bit cool at about 60 degrees, but otherwise it was perfect for an outdoor party.

Thursday morning opened with a keynote speech from Beau Pollack of Trio Electric, who spoke about how to compete in a “green” market. Afterwards, attendees split up and went to their choice of breakout sessions for the remainder of the day. Also, this was when our computer lab, another Summit 2009 first, opened for business. This allowed customers to come in and ask their questions of a CSI expert who could show them things right in the software itself, and it was an instant success.

The afternoon wrapped up with industry-specific Town Hall Meetings, then after a short break, everyone loaded up onto a bus and went to the conference party at The Rainbow Lodge. Once there, everyone went out to the deck for cocktails and appetizers with the entire CSI Software staff, which was then followed by a delicious dinner.

Friday began with a keynote speech by Glen Rappaport, the Vice President of Information Technology for Sport & Health clubs, who spoke about how his organization uses the Microsoft Reporting Services tool to get customized reports from the Spectrum NG data. The remainder of the day was occupied with breakout sessions and computer lab time until we bid our guests a fond farewell at about 3:30p.

We want to thank everyone who made the trip to join us for the Summit, and we hope to see you again next year!

League and Tournament Management Module

Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 1:00p CDT

If you manage your facility’s Intramural Program or Leagues, you will not want to miss this webinar.

Register Today!

With the League and Tournament Management module, you can:

Create a variety of leagues and tournaments over as many sports, age groups, and skill levels as you would like

Specify whether participants need to pay a Team Fee or Individual Fee

Seamlessly transition a League into either a single- or double-elimination tournament bracket, seeded according to their league season record

Track which employees are officiating each game, and how much to pay them for officiating

Integrate with the other Facility Management modules in Spectrum NG when scheduling your games so that you will never double-book a resource

Allow your participants to register, view, and manage their league and tournament teams and games online, from the comfort of their home or office

And much, much more!

Throughout most of the country, the weather is getting warmer, the rainy days are becoming fewer and further between, and the days are getting longer.  Summer is kind of a mixed bag in the fitness industry, and can be either your slowest time or your busiest time, depending on the type of facility that you run.  For those of you with a facility that concentrates on working out – full of cardio machines and weight benches, you might notice that there is not as long of a wait list to get on a treadmill in the evenings.  People can now take their runs outdoors, and various league sports are starting up for them to get their cardio fix.  Those of you in Campus Recreation are in for a very slow couple of months as all of the students go home for the summer.  However, those of you who have full-service facilities, with tennis courts, outdoor pools, and large youth programs are now getting into the really busy part of your year.  True, you might have fewer adults coming to use your facility, but they pretty much take care of themselves.  When your facility becomes inundated with children during the summer months is when your staff truly earns their pay.

So why am I talking about this in a software company blog?  Well, I want to give you all a few ideas of things you can do with the software to make the summer months easier and to prepare for next fall.  As I write this, we are about a week away from Memorial Day weekend, which in addition to being the day that we remember those brave members of the Armed Forces who gave their lives fighting for our freedom, also marks the day that outdoor pools are opening all over the country for the summer season.

There are several ways that CSI Software can help out at an outdoor pool.  First, you can set up the system to track all of the visits to the pool, and you can restrict access to only those people who have a pool membership.  The system can combine your pool usage with your facility usage so you can get total usage figures, while at the same time tracking them separately so that you can see how many people came into each area.  Second, you can set up a Point of Sale station at your pool.  This will allow you to sell guest passes, supplies (sunscreen, goggles, etc.), and snacks/beverages if you have a snack bar or cabana by your pool.  Third, and possibly the most profitable, the Program Registration module can keep track of your group swim lesson rosters, schedules, and fees for you.  Parents can even enroll their kids and pay for their lessons online!

What about those tennis or sand volleyball courts?  Well, the system can help out there, too.  The Scheduler can keep track of court reservations or private lessons, both of which can be scheduled online.  Program Registration can keep track of group tennis lessons, and Event Manager can keep track of when various groups (internal or external) will be using the sand volleyball courts.

Summer is also a big time for youth and teen league sports, and CSI Software has you covered there too – check out our League and Tournament Manager to keep track of all of your teams.  Through this tool, you can enroll participants, collect fees, create your schedule, book the fields that will be used, keep track of participation, and track the results of each game and the standings within the league.  Guess what, this can all be done online too!

Those of you who are looking down the barrel of a slow summer, I haven’t forgotten about you – this is a good time for you to evaluate your software needs for the upcoming fall season and for you to learn more about the use of the software so you can maximize your investment.  What are some things that you can do during your slow time?  Well, how about upgrading your software, for starters?  If you are not already on Spectrum NG, the summer is a good time for you to look at making the switch.  The training calendar is filling up quickly, though, so make sure you get yours booked soon.

If you are already on Spectrum NG, perhaps you can make it your goal to learn the full intricacies of one or two modules that you’re not too familiar with now.  Perhaps you should learn a module that you haven’t purchased yet so you can see if that would be of benefit to your facility.  Live web seminars are being offered all summer long on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for various modules within the software, and we have a library of previously recorded sessions available on our website for you to view whenever you’d like.  Check out our live webinar schedule by clicking on http://www.csisoftwareusa.com/training/schedule.php.  Click on the “Watch Now” link on the right side of that screen if you want to see the list recorded webinars.  In addition to that, we have a whole series of lessons in our eLearning Library (http://www.csisoftwareusa.com/training/online.php) for you to watch at your own pace as well.  Don’t see the webinar or lesson you’re looking for?  Just send me an email at education@csisoftwareusa.com and request it.  Lastly, you can always schedule a time with your Account Manager to go over the software package you are currently using and try to determine ways that you could be using it better.

Well, I hope that this has given you some ideas for ways that you can spend summer at your facility.  If you’re interested in getting a demonstration of any of the software modules I mentioned here, please contact your Account Manager.  If you are located west of the Mississippi River, that would be Toni Grafner (tgrafner@csisoftwareusa.com), and if you are east of the Mississippi River, that would be Randy Cruz (rcruz@csisoftwareusa.com).  To find out more about how you could be better using your existing software modules, look at the webinar schedule for a pertinent session, or feel free to contact me by email at education@csisoftwareusa.com

I hope you have a great summer! 

PJ Gustafson

Quite a few of our competitors have been making statements recently about how big they are or how high they rank with such claims as the ones listed below:

• Largest club management software company
• More customers than any other software company
• #1 in club management software
• #1 in onsite training and support

Of course, none of them actually state how they arrived at these figures and in some cases, what they even mean.

The only statement we have made in our marketing material is that more companies in the Club Industry Fitness Business Pro magazine Top 100 use CSI Software’s Club Management Software than any other software vendor in the world. This is very easy to quantify and to confirm our figures we contacted every club in the Top 100 and asked them what software vendor they currently use.

So, the next time you read an advertisement from a software company with such claims as the ones above, please take it with a grain of salt.

We have decided to withdraw from the IHRSA Technology Forum being held this year in San Francisco.  This event had been previously sponsored exclusively by Checkfree, but this year IHRSA decided to open it up to multiple vendors.

It sounded great at first until we started learning about all of the other companies that would be participating.  With the exception of CSI Software and one other vendor, all of the other participating organizations are billing companies.

CSI Software prides itself on being a technology company.  We are constantly promoting how technology can save companies money.  It is insane for any organization to use a third-party to process their billing when the technology exists to do it yourself – and reduce costs!  Participating in a “Technology Forum” with billing companies seems contradictory to how we have positioned ourselves as a company, and as a result, we have decided to withdraw.

If you look through the recent blog history, you’ll notice that there are a lot of posts with the heading, “Twitter Updates for [date]”.  These are updates that we’re posting to our Marketing Twitter account (http://twitter.com/CSI_Software) that are automatically being posted to our blog as well.  This is just one of the many things that can be done with Twitter.

So what is Twitter?  Twitter is a fairly new web application that allows people to answer the question, “What are you doing?”, before they’re even asked.  It lets you tell your friends what you’re up to.  We use Twitter here at CSI Software to update our customers on a variety of things through our three Twitter accounts.  We give you updates, or “Tweets” on The Summit, any upcoming trade show appearances, live demonstration opportunities, and more through the aforementioned Marketing account.  We Tweet to let you know when we post new Spectrum NG updates to the server, when a new version of our software is released for you to upgrade to, and any other important support notices through our Support account (http://twitter.com/CSI_Software), and we Tweet when new webinar schedules are posted, when new eLearning Lessons are available, and our new Tip of the Week through our Education account (http://twitter.com/CSI_Software).  

How do you get these updates?  Well, there are a number of ways to do it.  First, you can simply go periodically to each of the Twitter links above and check to see what we’ve posted.  That’s the old, “Web 1.0” method of doing it – still effective, but not really convenient.  Second, you can sign up for your own free Twitter account and Follow the CSI accounts that you want to get updates from.  You can even set it to send you emails or text messages whenever updates from certain people come in.  This brings you into the more modern “Web 2.0” realm, where the web comes to you – more on this later.  Creating your own account gives you a couple more options – you can subscribe to an RSS feed by clicking on the RSS link at the bottom of your home page, then copying and pasting the URL into a desktop RSS aggregator, like the Google Desktop toolbar.  That way, the updates just show up on your computer as people make them.  Also, if you are an iPhone or iPod Touch user, you can use a Twitter-interfacing application such as Twitterific or Twittelator to read and make updates while on the go.  To find out more about Twitter and to set up your account, go to www.twitter.com.

In the paragraph above, I made a reference to “Web 2.0”.  This is a term used to refer to the next generation in internet technology and how the internet is used.  Most of us these days are familiar with what is now called “Web 1.0”, which primarily consists of web sites which you seek out and visit to gather information, and these sites are the exact same site that another web surfer would read if they went to the same address.  One of the goals of Web 2.0 is to customize the information you see on the internet, and also to bring that information to you instead of you needing to seek it out.  There are many other components and goals of Web 2.0, but this latter one is what I will concentrate on in this post.

So what kind of content can be brought to me?  All kinds of things!  News articles, blogs, podcasts, you name it!  All you have to do is find the content source and then subscribe to it.  Most of these things are brought to you via an RSS feed.  RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, and is a file stored on the internet that the publisher updates.  You can subscribe to this file with some type of RSS Aggregator (I like using Google Desktop) and whenever the publisher updates the file, you get the new content brought to you automatically! 

As you look around our site, you’ll see several Web 2.0 elements, such as this blog, our Twitter accounts, and several RSS feeds.  We continue to seek out more and more new technologies that we can leverage to increase our communications and to otherwise help you, our customers.  We enjoy being an innovator in this industry, and we look forward to staying that way.

CSI Software 1, Hurricane Ike 0

Ferocious Hurricane Ike slammed into Houston early Saturday morning as a powerful Category 2 hurricane.  Both the CSI Software corporate office and the data center located near the Intercontinental airport survived unscathed.

“Hurricane Ike was a major test for our data center” says Jonathan Ross, President and CEO of CSI Software.  “The eye of the hurricane actually passed right over the facility early Saturday morning and even though it lost electricity, all of the emergency backup systems kicked in and there was no interruption of service for any of our customers.”

The CSI Software corporate office suffered no damage or loss of power and reopened for business on Tuesday, September 16.

I just completed a Podcast on billing companies, aptly titled:  “When Billing Companies Attack!”  The Podcast attempts to demystify the billing process so health and fitness clubs (the only vertical we service that actually uses billing companies) can once and for all realize what a complete and utter waste of money these companies are and how they add no value to the business.

The standard pitch from these glorified courier services is as follows:  “we will provide you with software if you let us process your EFT and credit card drafts”.   For Christ sake, one of them even offers “free software” on their website if you sign up with them.  Of course they will.  They make so much money from processing that they can afford to sell their software as a loss leader.

What kills me about these companies is that they position themselves as “technology” companies when in fact they are the antitheses of technology.

If you are serious about embracing and leveraging technology to, for example, reduce costs, it makes no sense to use a third-party to process your billing when the technology exists to do it yourself. 

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I encourage you to listen to the Podcast “When Billing Companies Attack!”

Submitted by Andy Widgerson

This month is always hectic as we prepare for our annual PCI audit.  For those of you who don’t know, PCI is a set of standards that CSI Software adheres to for the protection of our customer credit card information.  It requires a yearly audit of our standards and practices for handling customer data security.  I have just finished the Policy Compliance Questionnaire which just went from 75 to 230 questions.  So as you can see, VISA is tightening up their standards for data security.

By the way, we passed, so that is one obstacle out of the way.  We still have the audit and the network penetration scan to go.  I’ll be glad when all of this is over and done with.

submitted by Barry McKeone