When you start working on the SHC platform, you may wonder what are the core components of the platform and how they do work together. This article explains components such as location/department/calendars and their relationships.
A. INTRO TO SMART HEALTH CLUBS, THE ALL-IN-ONE MEMBER ENGAGEMENT PLATFORM
As you very well know, clubs and their members have many needs. For instance the need for booking spots, biking lanes, lanes in swimming pools. Need for booking instructors, reaching out to members with new offers, promotions. Need for on-demand video lessons in these COVID times and in the foreseeable and a lot more.
So how are clubs currently getting serviced by their app providers and technology vendors? You will be surprised to know that to deliver the information and services to members most health clubs need between 6-12 different software Apps, including for these tasks:
- Booking & Attendance
- Instructor Substitution
- E-commerce
- Website Hosting
- Nutrition Programming
- Contact tracing
- Fitness Plans & Hire a Trainer
- Member Acquisition
- Member Rewards
- Virtual Fitness including live streaming, on-demand, 2-way video conferencing, and rebroadcasting.
To access each one, the member needs to sign in with a UserName and a Password, remember them, and toggle back and forth amongst them. It is confusing, costly and time-consuming. All of this creates a disjointed member experience.
The solution is our All-in-One Member Engagement Platform. There is nothing as complete or seamless in the industry.
We have a rich set of features and functionality and 5 modules.
Every club is given the SHC Platform or their instance of the Platform, which can be customized for them and by them and to which club-specific data can be added. But, everything cannot be customized. For example, on the App, if a club says. I do not want the Home button as the first item on the bottom left, we cannot change that basic layout.
B. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Some clubs have multiple locations, so in those cases, the location aspect is significant. When members and staff open the App, they select the location they want to access and then they access data for one location. But they can switch to see data for other locations as well. A member is not attached to any specific location in the App. Staff members are attached to a location and can also be attached to multiple locations. For example, if Coach Randy is attached to Marine Location, then he can only be allocated to classes in Marine Location and his name shows up in the list of instructors for Marine, but it does not show up in other locations. But, if he is attached to Marine and the Harbour location, then he can be allocated to classes in both Marine and Harbour.
The platform is designed in a way to support specific data for locations (Instructors, Calendar, Classes, Groups, Products) and yet having some common data or features which is applicable to all locations, such as Member referral, Food and Exercise Library. The latter is called Company level data.
Note: Clubs provide this Company Level information in the Company form in Phase 1 and update it in the Company Page in the Web App. And the location-specific information, in the Location form in Phase 1 and Club page in the Web App.
If a Club is a single location club, then this design does not benefit them in any way, but it does not harm them either.
Coming back to the role of Location, to summarize:
Whether you open the Mobile App or the Web App you have to first choose your location. And once you select your location, you see a bunch of information. Some of that information will be the same for all users, and some will be based on the location you selected.
C. ARCHITECTURE
Now let us talk about the Architecture of the Platform. At the highest level, the SHC Platform has 2 parts - a Mobile App and Web App, which is called Management Console in SHC.
Mobile App is what the Members use to engage with the club and vice versa. Web App is what the staff use to run the various club services and functions like booking a class or marking attendance or changing an icon or deleting a trainer.
Whatever you do on the Console reflects in the App. For example, you can change an icon for a department and it will show on the App instantly. This instant change is attributed to SHC being implemented as a SaaS platform (software as a service)
D. DEPARTMENTS
The next major component after Location that helps us organize club data and information on the Platform is that of Departments. Departments are represented by club specific icons on the Club tab of the Mobile app. These could be Tennis, Swimming, Personal Fitness or Pilates. These vary per Club (and Location) and should reflect the organization structure and the services offered by the club. For example, a club with 2 locations may have different departments. Location A may have Yoga, while Location B may not have Yoga.
The two most common Departments that almost every club has are Group Fitness and Personal Fitness. Then some have many more Departments and some have fewer depending on the size and services offered by the club(related to the concept of Base and Base Plus App, see Note below). Departments further have a lot of details like Calendar, Instructors, Classes, Plans etc.
Keep in mind that Departments can only be created by SHC, which means that the club themselves cannot add a new department. So, anytime a club needs a new department, they have to request SHC. Only SHC Global Admin and Global Support can add new departments.
But, data for each department is provided by the Club in the forms in Phase 1: Inputs of the Onboarding Process. SHC enters that data during the Phase 2: Build. This is one time data entry based on information provided by the clubs in the forms in Phase 1, but subsequently, that data is updated and maintained by the club. For example, a department may get 5 new instructors or 2 add new classes. They can go to the Web App and add all that themselves.
The data relating to the departments is hierarchical. Typically, Location data (captured in the Club page in the Web App) overrides Department data in some cases. But, in exceptions, it is overridden by Department data. A department name can be changed globally for all locations on the Company page, but can also be customized for each location for the same department. For Example, on the Company page, a department can be named “Kid’s Club” and it will apply to all 4 locations. However, using the club’s page, “Kid’s Club” can be renamed to “Youth Programs” only for Location 1, overriding the name set on the Company page.
Note: At the time of signing up, clubs can either go for a BASE App package or a BASE Plus App. The difference is that the former allows a club only 2 departments, while the latter allows unlimited departments. The charges for the latter are obviously higher. Most clubs go for BASE Plus, very few go for BASE.
E. NEXT LEVEL OF THE ARCHITECTURE
The second level of architecture is the next set of components - Calendar, Instructors (Staff), Classes, Member data, Resources (studios, pools, etc), etc. This data is what is used by the platform to make the various functionality and modules work.
For example, the Book a class functionality uses data from Classes, Resources, and Calendar. Instructor Substitution Module functionality uses data from classes and calendars and instructors.
The SHC Calendar is a super important construct here. The SHC calendar functionality is fully integrated with and based on Google calendars. Every club department that offers either booking, classes needs a calendar. In fact, a published schedule or calendar is one of the key features of our platform from the club’s point of view.
So, every department that offers classes or booking needs a Google Calendar. We (SHC Global Admin during Phase 2 of the Onboarding Process) create the calendar for them and link it to the Platform. On top of that Google calendar sits our Integrated Calendar functionality, which makes creating events on the calendar easy for clubs. Clubs don't actually work with the Google Calendar. Clubs work with our Integrated Calendar. See the relevant article on Knowledge Base
(https://help.smarthealthclubs.com/knowledge/how-to-use-the-integrated-calendar)
Now how many calendars might a club have? As many as departments that need them! And keep in mind that this is by location also. So, if Location A has a Group Ex department, we need a calendar for that. Location B also has a Group Ex department, another calendar for that.
SHC only creates the calendar and links it. Events on the calendar like classes are added by the Department Managers or Directors using information from Classes, Instructors, and Resources. A typical event or class has the following information: Name of class, Time, Instructor Name, Resource Name or Location name.
F. ROLES
Another important construct is that of Roles. Club staff gets access to perform various actions and tasks on the Web App and Mobile based on the role they are assigned. More info can be found in this link: https://help.smarthealthclubs.com/knowledge/managing-roles-on-the-shc-platform
G. HOW DO YOU WORK IN THE PLATFORM? HOW DO YOU SET UP THE DEPARTMENTS AND CLUB FUNCTION?
So, you have all these 2nd level constructs. Now what you need to do is work with them. What is the architecture for that? It is a simple 3 step process -
- CREATE
- SHOWCASE
- ADD TO LIBRARY
Let us understand this with the help of a simple example. Let us say, you are a Group Fitness Director in a club and you want to offer a Stretching and Toning class in your club. So, how will you go about it?
First, Create a class on the Console. Add relevant info like duration, level of difficulty, whether it is bookable or not, etc.
Second, Showcase it. Anything you create on the SHC platform like a class, instructor, or plan you have to remember to showcase or it will not show on the Mobile App. This is useful also when you want to hide something. If an instructor is going on leave, you can hide the instructor and showcase him when he is back. Showcasing is done for every department and for every location.
Note: Remember that all information that can be showcased is location-specific.
The third step is adding what you have created to the Club Library. Only if something is added to Club Library, can it be seen and edited by other staff in that department. For example, if an Instructor creates a class, then since he is the owner, only he can see the class. So, he should add it to the Library so other staff and his Department Director can also see and edit it. This also has 2 steps. He adds it to Library, but his offer to add needs to be approved by the Department Director. And that is most logical, right. Any Department head will want to control what goes into the library.
Besides this, there is also the concept of the Global Library, which is the library SHC gives to all clubs via the Mobile App. A club can also donate classes and other such things to the Global Library.