The digital world changes fast, and that’s only going to accelerate. Speaking at IHRSA 2017, Al Noshirvani, chairman of Motionsoft, a leading technology and payment processing company in the health, fitness, and wellness markets stressed that any digital strategy shouldn’t be set in stone. “The key takeaway is that club operators need to implement digitally nimble solutions,” notes Noshirvani.
“Operators solve very real business challenges while creating ROI. Digitally nimble solutions allow operators to make incremental changes to individuals modules as opposed to wholesale changes to an entire application platform. At the end of the day, your goal is to not have any single solution become a choke point that can stall your business growth, derail your technology strategy or increase your costs,” he says.
After founding Motionsoft in 2004, Noshirvani watched the health club industry confront tech disruption with mixed results. “One of the things that our industry didn’t have was a forum where health club and fitness executives could meet on a regular basis to share ideas with their peers and colleagues to see what worked,” says Noshirvani. He decided that there had to be a better way to expand the knowledge base for fitness leaders when it came to technology.
Five years ago, Noshirvani organized the first Motionsoft Technology Summit in New York to bring together thought leaders from around the industry to discuss ways to leverage technology to enhance retention and revenue. This year’s event will take place October 3-5 in Washington, D.C., where it’s expected to draw more than 200 of the industry’s best and brightest to discuss the theme: “The Convergence of Marketing, Sales, and IT on Creating Memorable Member Experiences.”
“We’re going to focus on member experience and how club operators can reach beyond the four walls of their fitness facilities and remain the trusted source of fitness and wellness information in their members' lives,” says Noshirvani. “The goal is to address the challenge of attrition and retention, so clubs can create stickiness with their members.”
A Single Source of Truth
Noshirvani hopes that the Motionsoft Technology Summit helps prevent club owners from being intimidated by the growing spectrum of digital platforms.
“Often technology is viewed as something overwhelming, when in reality it's become so much simpler to remain relevant,” he says. “As long as it is integrated and extensible, technology can continue to evolve in a way that's non-disruptive to businesses. I think apps are a great example of where you can identify a need and continue to innovate and upgrade functionality.”
To bring these dynamic digital products together successfully, you have to have what Noshirvani calls a “single source of truth,” a software platform that can leverage multiple third-party apps and integrate them into a club’s data streams. That’s what Motionsoft’s club management software was designed to do: Create a premium member experience while providing payment processing and revenue management in a unitary system.