Zombie technology: is your club management software creating a horror show?
By Srishti Singh
They are there. Hiding in the shadows. Bedeviling everything from the way you communicate across your club to your ability to get things done. They are the demons lurking in your disparate systems
Left to their own devices, they can slowly suck the life out of a club. It's time to expose them. Bring them into the light of day. So we can drive them out. Never to return.
Here is a field guide to identifying the evil fiends.
The Time Vampire
This creature skulks among all your disparate systems. It thrives by sucking up all your staff's time by cursing them with manually entering information from one system to another. Or causing them to cross-check information in multiple databases to make sure the billing is right or a member isn't left off of an event they registered for.
This fiend especially delights in watching you and your staff scramble when it's report time and you have to pull data from those multiple systems and databases. And then try to turn it into coherent insights.
The Frankenstein Monster
With those cobbled-together systems, you have created a monster. There are telltale signs. Lurching and staggering operations. Faltering abilities to communicate.
Every time you try to update a system or bolt-on functionality, the creature becomes more grotesque and unwieldy. You end up spending more time and more money trying to wrangle the beast. Training and retraining your staff. Patching security vulnerabilities again and again. And just trying to keep this brute stitched together.
The Befuddlement Goblins
These mischievous imps infest your siloed systems. They delight in the chaos that they create by keeping systems from speaking to each other. They can drive staff insane by forcing them to run from one department to another, trying to get the most recent data.
Worse yet, they can wreak havoc on the member experience. They've been responsible for orders getting lost in the restaurant, tee times being jumbled, court reservations disappearing, and more.
The Befuddlement Goblins can seem like an irritating but tolerable nuisance. That is until you see how they make it hard to retain staff and leave members feeling spooked about renewing.
The Financial Fog
This evil spirit is insidious. It's hardly noticeable as you go about the daily financial business of the club. Sure, it's a pain to try and get a consolidated view with all those disparate systems. But you do your best to root around for all the information you need for accounts receivable and payables. You slog through. Invoices get sent out. Bills get paid. And mistakes get made.
Being in the middle of it, it's hard for you and your people to see the fog that creeps in and engulfs the backend operations. The impenetrable haze chokes any ability you and your people have to do anything other than to just keep up. Time for process improvement gets lost. Lost in the fog.
The Brain Eater
This creature may be the most sinister. It lives to devour any ability you have to be able to strategize about the future of your club.
The Brain Eater is naturally drawn to clubs with Time Vampires, the Frankenstein Monster, Befuddlement Goblins, and the Financial Fog. It knows these other fiends create an environment where it's difficult to do anything more than just keep up with the day-to-day. In this bog of disparate, siloed systems and faltering communication and coordination, the Brain Eaters add to the chaos. They ravage the last shred of possibility of gathering any intelligence from your systems that could help you optimize, reinvent, and innovate in your club.
Exorcising your demons
If you have been seeing the signs of zombie technology at your club, all is not lost. There is still time to drive out the evil lurking in your operation. It begins by creating an environment that repulses the demons. An environment where disparate systems disappear. Where your country club management software operates on one database that connects everything and everyone, shining a light on even the darkest corners of the operation. In this environment, the ghouls cannot survive. The spirits flee. And the once horror show becomes the idyllic club you always knew it could be.
With the Northstar complete club management software solution, you have access to a premier platform. A platform that can protect your club from those demons of inefficiency, confusion, and chaos that can creep in. The Northstar platform is built on one database, giving your entire operation a single source of truth for better decisions for the club. And a better experience for members. Thinking about implementing anything less is just spooky. Get the full profile ? request a demo of the Northstar Technologies solution, today.