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Nuneaton Old Edwardians RFC:
making the right moves
For any local rugby club, progress typically means the leagues,
but nowadays it also means having the plans and the latest tools
to:
- manage the membership, bar and catering more effectively,
- improve the club’s bottom line,
- and both increase and create more value for your members’
subscriptions.
The decision makers at Nuneaton Old Edwardians RFC had
long nurtured ambitious plans for the club’s future, but were
saddled with a membership structure in which the categories
had become numerous and complex, old software that made
membership administration laborious, and stand-alone cash tills
which made it cumbersome to run the bar, let alone do things like
run a tiered discount scheme.
That said, they had four main objectives when they searched for
some new EPoS and Membership technology for their thriving
local rugby club:
- To add more structure, clarity and capability to the membership
categories.
- To make communications easier and more effective, by using
e-mail to communicate with their members and prospective
members.
- To both encourage new members to subscribe, and to
increase bar turnover, by providing a series of discounts to their
membership categories.
- Above all, to demonstrate to their members that their club was
investing in growth.
Having got the right mindset and plans, what they now needed
were the right tools. What followed shows that Nuneaton Old
Edwardians RFC is a great example of how investing in some
market leading technology can take a club and its membership
forwards as a direct result.
Background: an award winning club for friendliness
on and off the pitch
Over the 100 odd years of the club’s existence it has gained a
reputation for friendliness off the field whilst retaining a healthy
competitiveness on it. As a result, the Warwickshire Referees
Society has awarded the club the ‘Whistler’ trophy three times
in recent years because in their opinion it’s the most pleasant to
visit and referee.
Founded in 1910, Nuneaton Old Edwardians initially provided
rugby football for the Old Boys of what was King Edward VI
Grammar School. Going ‘open’ in 1955, it welcomes players
from all backgrounds and walks of life, and the club regularly
runs two and occasionally three sides on Saturday afternoons,
with the First XV of the club at present playing in the Midlands
Two West (South) League.
22 Issue 66
Streamlining the membership categories
Nuneaton Old Edwardians RFC has potential for over 600
members, with 84 registered players in several different
categories, plus over 100 life members.
As part of streamlining the many different membership categories,
the decision to acquire and install the new Electronic Point of
Sale (EPoS) technology from MHS Group helped crystallise
their thinking. Furthermore, it was agreed to combine it with the
RFU’s own Game Management System (GMS) developed by
its lead technology partner FirstSports, and the net result is that
the membership categories have now been streamlined down
to just four.
This much simpler membership structure has not only made
the administration and subscription invoicing much easier, but
has in turn also allowed the club to create and set attractive bar
discounts reflecting the relative status of each category:
- Player: 15%
- Platinum: 10%
- Joint Platinum: 10%
- Standard: 5%
Exploiting the GMS’s Direct Debit feature
The decision was also taken by the Club to utilise the GMS’s
Direct Debit functionality, a feature which turns otherwise large
and thought-provoking annual payments into monthly or regular
smaller amounts, and thus more affordable.
Although currently there is no live link between the EPoS system
and GMS, MHS Group are currently developing a software
interface. MHS Group will further modify the EPoS software to
hold one more character in the Membership Primary Key field
so that it is compatible with the GMS. The live link will enable
EPoS and the GMS to ‘talk’ to each other and share data in
real time, so that a member’s bar card can be pre-loaded, used
to buy drinks at discounted prices, topped up and used again,
with the transaction and balance data recorded in EPoS and
Membership details and subscription payments in the GMS.
Achieving the club’s objectives
Club president Ged O’Neill is delighted that their main objectives
are being achieved with the club’s investment in new technology,
as he reflects, “It is certainly helping us to add more structure and
clarity. It also gives the club the vital capability to communicate
with members and prospective members via e-mail, and from an
administration point of view it’s providing us with a central point
of reference for multiple administrators.”
Creating new opportunities
The EPoS system will create new opportunities as well. Besides
establishing a price differential for the bar product sales between
members and visitors that will enhance the gross margins