ABC Fitness Solutions Acquires FitnessBI
ABC Fitness acquires FitnessBI, a data warehouse-as-a-service tool that will offer insights into membership, finances, class and program attendance and more.
ABC Fitness Solutions, a tech and consulting firm for fitness club operators, has acquired FitnessBI, a data management service that touts itself as “the club owner’s ultimate dashboard” and which is in use at about 1,100 businesses.
The acquisition allows ABC Fitness Solutions, a partner to gym owners since 1981, to enter the sector of “data warehouse as a service,” and offer clients a single platform from which to store and analyze information.
“ABC has been consistently asked for more robust analytics,” ABC Fitness Solutions CEO Bill Davis told Athletech News. “If you can help us aggregate all this data and create one source of truth.”
The new product, dubbed ABC Performance Insights Data Warehouse-as-a-Service, will offer a single point for users to access information about foot traffic, membership, finances, class and program attendance and more. Davis said such a service is more critical by the burden of attempting to stay afloat as the pandemic ravages the industry, closes clubs permanently and changes the behavior of their target demographic.
“In the fitness industry, operators spend one to two hours a day analyzing data and that could be [on] eight systems,” he said. “Ultimately, this limits their ability to react nimbly. Post-pandemic, to be nimble to member needs is critical.”
The tool could measure the popularity of certain classes or programs at certain times a day. As fitness routines move more toward a “hybrid model,” said Davis, where exercises are done from home via new devices or content subscription services, some activities might not worthy of investment, whereas some that could only be done at the gym might be ones to highlight.
It could also determine which demographics are staying enrolled at the club and which are leaving, an insight an operator could use to retain members. If parents — or people in the parent age group — are bailing, perhaps one could add childcare, for example.
Membership cancelation has been daunting for the industry. After spring-of-2020 lockdowns closed fitness spaces and through several spikes and hotspots, troves of members have declined to come back. One study, released in August, found that only 31 percent of one-time gym members had returned, with many canceling or freezing their memberships. Of course, mass vaccinations and declines in COVID-19 cases would allow facility operators an opportunity to entice people back. Davis said they should be ready to act with insight and adapt quickly throughout that next challenge.
“The success of every club is their ability to attract and retain members,” said Davis. A data warehouse-as-a-service approach offers a “depth of opportunity around which promotions create the highest probability of success to attract new members.”
