Children's Play & Family Entertainment Centres:CurveMotion

The challenge:

To implement a single system capable of managing all of the operational requirements of the business, especially EPoS, CRM, online bookings and children’s security. The system needed to be easy to use and deliver comprehensive management information to measure the business and support operational and marketing decisions.

The solution

After evaluating a number of available solutions, CurveMotion selected Venpos. With a background in IT, CurveMotion’s founder, Fiona Bayliss, knew she wanted a single integrated solution for her new venture. “We didn’t want the complications and administrative cost of running different systems in different parts of the business. Venpos scored highly with us because it allows us to manage the business from a single back office application.”

CurveMotion is using the following modules from the Venpos application suite:

• Venpos Bureau
• Venpos Admissions
• Venpos Online
• Venpos Bookings
• Venpos CRM

Safety and security

Delivering a safe and friendly environment for families to have fun together is CurveMotion’s passion. Part of creating this safe environment has been the implementation of a security procedure designed to ensure that children’s entry and exit from the centre is recorded and monitored to ensure the right child leaves with the right parent. The precise functionality that CurveMotion needed was not part of the Venpos offer at the time. This being the case, Vennersys worked closely with CurveMotion to understand the exact requirements and then carried out a short custom development to deliver it.

The security process uses a special wristband printer, normally used in medical environments but which is a perfect fit for CurveMotion’s needs. Wristbands are issued to each family group upon arrival. The wristbands have an identifying barcode printed on them which is unique to that family group. When the group leaves, all of the wristbands are scanned to ensure that the right children are leaving with the right adult/parent.

As well as enhancing security, the use of coloured wristbands to denote different play or skating sessions provides a helpful visual cue for the CurveMotion team to manage the visitors effectively.

CRM

CurveMotion understands that customer loyalty drives repeat visits and increases spend per visit. Ensuring a fantastic visitor experience is one element of building loyalty but equally important in today’s competitive environment is the ability to know your customers and communicate regularly with them.

To help them establish and maintain this ongoing “conversation” with their customers, CurveMotion has deployed Venpos CRM. As well as capturing basic contact information about the customer (subject to customer permission), Venpos CRM allows CurveMotion to tailor the information they collect, for example the birth dates of the children in the particular family group. This allows CurveMotion to send a Happy Birthday card for message at the appropriate time as well as perhaps giving Mum and Dad an inducement to plan a birthday party at the centre.

Venpos CRM also allows CurveMotion to manage a range of membership options which reward regular customers for longer term commitments. Commenting on Venpos CRM, Fiona Bayliss says, “it was important for us to know the that it [Venpos CRM] met both our immediate needs as well as being flexible enough to adapt to future needs as they emerge, such as incorporating social media channels into our marketing plans.