Labor costs pose one of the biggest challenges to private club management trying to keep their club in the green. With more than half of all private club expenses going toward payroll on average, there’s always room to identify areas of cost-cutting opportunity while maintaining the highest quality service for members.
How can you start optimizing labor costs at your private club? Start by finding the right club management software.
When it comes to investing in club management software, it can be difficult to see beyond the immediate expense. However, if you consider how an integrated system can help your team develop more efficient internal operations and more effective member engagement tactics, you’ll find that the right system can be the answer your club has been looking for.
Accurate labor data is one of the most valuable assets for private clubs. If you can’t collect and analyze critical management metrics for your club—labor costs, employee timesheets, point-of-sale activity, inventory numbers, service demand, etc.—then you’ll never be able to identify potential cost-cutting opportunities.
If you’re looking to improve your bottom line, personnel costs are a good place to start. In fact, 84% of private clubs say they would respond to declining revenues and dues by trying to reduce labor costs.
You can’t cut down on labor costs without actionable data. That’s where integrated club management software comes in.
Effective private club management solutions let you collect and report on aggregate labor cost data for specific time periods, showing you to see what days, weeks, or months you may have overstaffed or understaffed different areas of your clubs. You may be spending a significant amount of your budget on hourly employees that don’t need to be on-site during certain time periods, but without the proper reporting capabilities, you’ll never be able to find the gaps to fill.
Combine sophisticated, real-time reporting with state-of-the-art technology and you can significantly streamline labor costs in every club service area—especially in your dining facilities.
Let’s do a little thought experiment. Picture this:
You’ve recently implemented a tablet system for tableside service. The touch-screen system allows you to label seating arrangements and digitize your menu, giving servers the ability to quickly submit accurate orders for each diner without running the risk of writing down the incorrect dish or serving your members the incorrect dish.
The order is automatically sent to the kitchen on submission. Since the order is digitized and the seating arrangement has been carefully recorded in the system, when the order is up, a runner can be trusted to bring the meal to the table without running the risk of giving members the incorrect dish.
The server is now free to stay on the floor to provide more personalized service to each table. The touch-screen kiosk system includes additional information for each dish, and they’re able to offer suggested wine pairings to each table based on their order—a valuable upsell opportunity.
With fewer servers, you’re able to provide even more service for your members thanks to this simple touch-screen system.
When it comes to your bottom line, making the switch to this technology—which is fully integrated into the rest of your club management software—has positively affected your bottom line in the following ways:
- Lowered Labor Costs
- Improved Member Services
- Created Upsell Opportunities
The numbers speak for themselves.
With a comprehensive set of integrated club management software, you’ll be able to gain better operational control of your entire enterprise to provide better service to members and better tools for management. If you’re trying to find ways to optimize labor costs for your private club, start with a quality suite of software solutions.
