Oldham Community Leisure switches to Gladstone

Oldham Community Leisure (OCL) has switched to Gladstone Health & Leisure from its previous software supplier ahead of launching two new sites this autumn.
The leisure trust, which operates 11 sports centres, swimming pools and synthetic pitches in Oldham, signed a five-year agreement with Gladstone earlier this year.
Peter Howson, head of customer relations at OCL, said: “We chose Gladstone as our new supplier because we knew their software and services could make a real difference to the efficiency of running our leisure centres. Gladstone has brought to market a great range of new products over the past few years, which will help to enhance our customer experience.”
Tom Withers, sales and marketing director at Gladstone, said: “We are delighted to announce our partnership with OCL. The team at OCL is dedicated to providing a great service to their community, with a diverse range of facilities and activities. By partnering with OCL, Gladstone will ensure our leisure management system improves customer service and helps the trust’s growth for the long term.”
Gladstone is providing a range of solutions across OCL’s sites, including Plus2 member management software, self-service Kiosks, Join@Home for online joining and the latest, mobile-responsive version of its online booking system, Connect. The course management tool, Learn2, will be launched next year.
In addition, Gladstone has developed a tailor-made access-control system for OCL’s two new-build centres: Royton Leisure Centre, which opened last month, and Oldham Leisure Centre, which opens this November.
The system allows specific facility usage data to be collected via a mounted touch-screen at turnstiles – in this instance, relating to swimming. Customers at the reception turnstiles simply answer the question, “Are you going to swim today?” with a yes/no answer. The response is then stored in the database for inclusion in reports.
“When we were deciding on a new software supplier, it was vital to both the council and OCL that we should be able to gather data on usage, yet we also wanted our customers to be able to move around our centres unhindered by questions,” said Howson. “Of all the suppliers we spoke to, only Gladstone took our ideas on board.
“We knew data relating to class and activity bookings would be automatically captured when members scanned in at the reception turnstiles, while additional turnstiles at the gym would track gym usage. Swimming usage was the missing piece of the jigsaw, as we did not want to have turnstiles at the pool for practical reasons. The touch-screen provides a simple yet effective solution to this problem.”
As well as developing the software, Gladstone consulted with access control experts ASP on the hardware design. The company now plans to adapt the product for the specific data-capture needs of other clients.
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Editor’s notes:
Gladstone Health & Leisure is the leading supplier of leisure management software in the UK and Ireland and has been the chosen partner of leisure trusts, local authority sports facilities, international health club chains, universities and independent operators for 30 years. Today more than 30,000 users and two million members benefit from Gladstone products across the globe.
Gladstone Health & Leisure offers a single, integrated solution to manage sales and marketing, membership management, bookings and resources, payments and finance, communications, point of sale, access control and security, and management information and reports, all in one place. www.gladstonemrm.com

For further information contact:
Rhianon Howells at Big Fish Public Relations
Tel: 01727 834629
Mob: 07967 551142
Email: rhianon@bigfishpublicrelations.co.uk