8 Ways Cloud Services can Improve Your Gym’s Bottom Line

If your gym or fitness club isn’t already using cloud services, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon. Cloud usage has skyrocketed over recent years, and a projected 98 percent of companies will switch to a hybrid-cloud by 2021. The ease of use, reduced costs, affordable plans, and centralized data management are all notable benefits for companies who utilize SaaS cloud-based platforms. And for health clubs, cloud computing can help increase bottom lines and overall membership retention.

Cloud computing offers fitness clubs a plethora of opportunities and ways to elevate their service delivery model. Tools like the following are in high-demand, and easily adaptable for fitness clubs:

• Digital apps
• Smart sensors
• Servo motor actuators
• Mobile devices
• Digital services
• The Internet of Things (Iot)

Health and fitness audiences are already on the cloud–and it’s key you meet your audience where they’re at. According to Flurry Analytics, health and fitness app usage has increased by 330 percent over the last three years. Moreover, 75 percent of these app users open their apps at least two times per week; 33 percent of users open these apps 10 times per week.

Investing in cloud computing allows you to better reach your potential clients and improve data management. But perhaps the most motivating reason for fitness clubs to utilize cloud-based SaaS, is improving revenue.

Read on to learn how your health and fitness club can benefit from cloud computing, and how cloud-based backup can help you increase your bottom line.

How Cloud Connectivity Helps Improve Revenue

You may be thinking that cloud computing and subsequent applications will only make running your club easier, but it can also improve your bottom line. Tools like smart sensors and digital apps can actually help increase your overall revenue in a number of ways:

1. IoT equipment can improve customer engagement: The IoT is constantly growing, and some reports suggest over 5.5 million “things” are added each day, and there will be an estimated 75 billion IoT connected devices by 2025. When leveraged correctly, the IoT can make it easier for members to engage with equipment and improve their overall exercise performance. Additionally, it’s been reported that gym members who use IoT equipment have a lower gym dropout rate compared to members who used traditional equipment. If you have them available, your clients will engage with your club more and drive overall investment.
2. Increase membership retention: As technology continues to evolve, gyms need to stay on top of new tech trends. Incorporating new innovations into your fitness club, like wearables and virtual reality, can increase member retention. By setting your gym apart from others with cutting edge fitness technology, you set yourself apart from others–and draw new members in.
3. Cloud-based tools like Microsoft or Google can streamline operations: Time is money. SaaS cloud-based tools like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspaces can also reduce extra work hours and reduce downtime–which can sometimes be quite costly. Each year, more companies are investing in cloud-based SaaS tools to improve their operations. By 2025, 85 percent of business apps used by companies will be SaaS-based.
4. More easily manager turnover: Employee life cycles can be tricky and hard to keep manual track of. Cloud services can streamline managing and repurposing licensing fees to new users without paying for more. As a result, being able to recycle licenses–which can be costly–saves you money and offers a seamless method of accessing data.
5. Protection from cyber attacks: Now more than ever, cyber attacks have become a daily threat to businesses. Ransomware attacks are estimated to happen every 11 seconds, with ransomware ransoms averaging over $111,000. Cyber attacks not only pose a costly threat to data protection and security, they can also damage your gym’s reputation and member trust. Membership data always needs to be protected, and cloud-based applications, like Backupify, can help protect against cyber threats.Get everything you need to know about ransomware risk in 2021 from our exclusive report here.
6. Reduced costs of data loss: Data loss can be incredibly expensive, especially for smaller businesses, like fitness clubs. The average cost of data loss averages around $3.6 million annually. However, gyms can protect against this risk by investing in cloud-based platforms, which often create a secondary copy or version of data that remains preserved or backed up in the cloud.
7. Spend less on in-house hardware: Fitness clubs and gyms shouldn’t have to choose between high-quality equipment and computer hardware. With cloud-based apps, the need for in-house hardware is reduced, since your data is often preserved in the cloud. This allows gyms to cut costs (and valuable space) on in-house data and computer hardware–and allows them to invest in top-notch equipment for their members.
8. Optimize staff time and increase productivity: Not everyone on your staff is going to be an IT pro. Cloud computing is designed to be easy for everyone to use, even if you’re not particularly tech savvy. Cloud-based SaaS usually features built-in tools and automated services, which make it easier for employees to use and navigate. Instead of spending hours on how to reassign a Microsoft 365 license, staff can easily do so and reallocate their time to other high-priority tasks.

But to Get These Benefits, and More, You Need a Data Management Plan

For gyms and fitness clubs, your bottom line is key to business success–but so is your data management plan. The financial and practical benefits of cloud-computing discussed above are obvious and quite attractive. But, if you don’t have the right data and security systems in place, you won’t be able to profit off these benefits.

That’s where Backupify can help you.

Backupify is a cloud-based platform that allows you to backup, manage, and secure all your data (and your members’). Using cloud-based applications like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspaces can be incredibly easy for gym staff to navigate, but there are always risks you need to watch out for.

With Backupify, we can offer your gym the following:

• Securing your data
• Reduce overhead costs on departed employees, which can add up
• Ransomware protection
• Stronger retention policies
• Shared responsibility protection
• Multiple daily backups of data, on our private cloud

Not ready for a demonstration? Check out the checklist below to help you identify what a SaaS Backup tool should be able to do.