It’s all systems go at Scottish leisure trust Live Active Leisure, with memberships up by almost 10% and a more efficient way of working in place, following a collaboration with DFC in May 2017.

Live Active covers a staggering 2,000 square miles and is responsible for 18 venues, 11 of which have a fitness element. The whole authority the organisation looks after totals a community of 150,000, meaning a collaboration with DFC was vital to take some of the load off.

Focus on sales

With a growing number of members to facilitate, Live Active felt it was imperative to offer more streamlined payment options, that would decrease admin time for their team and allow focus to go back where it should – sales.

For this reason DFC’s Fast DD payment option, which allows customers to make paperless Direct Debits and allows recurring payments to be collected online, was the chosen one.

DFC now sell Live Active memberships and collect membership fees using this streamlined payment option.

Business Planning and Marketing Manager, Karen Nichol, said: “DFC offered us an additional income generating opportunity. It’s allowed us to concentrate on sales rather than admin.”

Cost efficient

In addition to allowing the leisure trust to direct their focus elsewhere, the partnership with DFC was also desired by Live Active due to its financial benefit.

Karen continued: “It costs less to have a Direct Debit collected by DFC as opposed to the administrative costs of doing this in house. We’ve seen an uplift in memberships by around 10% and have saved so much time.

“The selling process for our customers is easier. There are now four payment dates to choose from as opposed to one, and we can sign people up for memberships in a much more streamlined way e.g. through using the iPad or iPhone.

“First payments also no longer need to be taken immediately, making the membership more attractive.”

Gladstone MRM

DFC can also be used with Gladstone MRM software. The software is used by multiple leisure based organisations to manage their memberships, and this was another contributing factor in the partnership of DFC and Live Active.

Karen said: “I would recommend working with DFC and we can see the benefits. We will look at other areas of the business over the next 12 months that could use Direct Debit, such as swimming lessons, and see if DFC’s services can be implemented there.”