Roehampton Club; a unique private members’ sports club, located in the heart of London and situated in magnificent parkland, offering its members a wonderful array of facilities including over 20 tennis courts, a championship golf course, croquet lawns, squash, 2 swimming pools and a state of the art gym. These, together with health spa, bars, restaurants and a comprehensive events calendar ensure a lively, social environment. A large variety of membership categories are available for this thriving private club, which enjoys a significant waiting list for potential members.
The Club had grown its IT infrastructure in response to the needs and requirements of different departments as and when they arose. As technology developed, each department responded to its specific infrastructure requirements. Staff time was taken up in manual tasks and there was no long term strategy to use the efficiencies that good IT management could provide. The CEO – Mark Newey, the board and the club management shared a vision to standardise all technologies to make sure that the service provided to members was as efficient as possible, without a massive additional spend. A local private members club had used Reliable Networks for a number of years and they were duly recommended.
The Technical Challenges
The first task was to understand the vision and objectives of the CEO and the main club board. The Reliable Networks team responded by performing an audit of all departments, third party providers and agencies. Membership cards, events booking systems, the club calendars, facility bookings membership payments and associated technologies were all considered in the overall project. In addition all internal and external telecommunications, security systems including cameras and all point of sales areas were examined which highlighted that each of the departments had very different needs and requirements from the IT infrastructure.
How Did Reliable Networks Help
Interviews of all departments were held, demands categorised and a high level plan was put in place. Reliable Networks immediately made a number of recommendations to simplify the day to day running of the club and focussed on standardising processes and procedures. Some training was recommended to increase efficiency in certain areas and all data was reviewed. Reliable Networks recommended key strategies to move to a centralised system that engaged with au departments and all member contact points. Reliable Networks took over the IT infrastructure, the responsibility for liaison with external agencies and provided full support to the infrastructure, 24/7. Disaster recovery solutions were introduced and third party providers were project managed to ensure the club was achieving best value for best of breed solutions. Reliable Networks also pinpointed a number of areas to centralise seamlessly in the midterm. They are now embarking on a long term plan with the club which will formalise budgets; ensure all hardware and software is scalable to satisfy future plans, standardise platforms and provide an infrastructure that satisfies all departments. The members have more control in terms of their cards; the booking procedures payments and invoicing. In addition all digital information is now captured, measured and quantified giving the club valuable new tools with which to plan and develop the club in line with membership demands and behaviour.
“It is with great pleasure that I write in support of Reliable Networks, who have played an integral role in standardising our club systems and procedures. The Reliable team have worked tirelessly to improve our infrastructure, to limit our exposure to risk, to make sure our data is used efficiently and safely and to improve the experiences of agencies.
I recommend them to every club, institution and business that requires high level project planning and sophisticated IT services to solve complex problems.”
Marc Newey | CEO | Roehampton club
46-48 East Smithfield,
London, E1W 1AW.
Reliable Networks is an established Cyber security and IT services company based in central London. Formed in 2004 by the current MD Paul Fisher, with the notion of providing first-class IT support and security services we have grown steadily year on year through word of mouth and referrals. We have a great understanding of business and its Cyber security and IT requirements, which means that the solutions that we recommend will be scalable and provide you with systems that allow your staff to perform to their optimum.
