Loughborough Sport - Future-ready with a robust, cloud-based solution

Loughborough University is world renowned and celebrated for its sporting excellence in areas which include performance and competition, development and participation, facilities, expert support specialisms and working partnerships.

Loughborough Sport is the department responsible for sport and fitness at the university. The department serves around 7,200 paid members. As well as running a wide variety of facilities across the 523 acre campus, including 2 world-class gyms, an indoor athletics centre and outdoor stadium, sports halls and all-weather pitches, a 50-metre swimming pool and a variety of sports courts.

Challenge: Keeping up with digital expectations

University students are true digital natives – born into a world of smartphones, tablets, apps and more. Loughborough Sport has found that each year new students are expecting a higher quality digital experience. It strives to let students do as much from their phones as possible.

Loughborough Sport had been using the same leisure management software since the 2000s. In 2021, having reached public spending thresholds, the organisation went out to tender to explore what the market had to offer.

This was a huge opportunity. Reliant on an on-premises software solution installed locally on site at the university, Loughborough Sport was increasingly held back by limited updates and enhancements.

Solution: Trusted, cloud-based software

To stay at the forefront and provide students with the best experience possible, Loughborough Sport sought a future-ready leisure management software solution for universities – able to keep up with the ever-changing demands of digital native students.

After a rigorous review process, the university chose Legend. Legend stood out as an established, robust cloud-based software solution.

A strong integration with Innovatise to power the Legend app would let Loughborough Sport continue using this popular native mobile app to serve its members – with potential to go further in the future. Plus, they were impressed by the digital member services features that Legend could provide in addition to the app integration.

Results: Superior digital experience for students

In August 2022, Loughborough Sport went live with Legend and has seen many benefits inc:

- The number of students signing up for a membership increased 8% year-on-year to reach record numbers – clearly a new membership structure was introduced that students love
- Now ready to build on the digital experience through the Innovatise and Legend app integration – an essential for students
- Members get more self-service options with easy-to-use digital member services features to complement the app
- Less admin work for the Loughborough Sports team frees them to focus on continuing to deliver exceptional sporting experiences

Above all, the organisation is ready to keep innovating for its students with a cloud-based solution that’s updated regularly with enhancements and new features.

“Legend is so much more sophisticated than we expected it to be! It’s exciting to discover everything it can do and just how flexible it is. There are so many things it will be able to do for us that we’re learning and understanding as we dig deeper into the platform.”
– Ben Carne, strategic insights manager, Loughborough Sport

Read more: https://www.legendware.co.uk/resources/loughborough-university-case-study/

University of Bristol - Easy access to physical activity for students

The University of Bristol is home to around 25,000 students and 8,500 staff, with 370 buildings in and around the city of Bristol. The Sport, Exercise & Health department operates 3 of these buildings, which are home to many facilities including a gym, studios, a swimming pool, sports halls, tennis, badminton and basketball courts, a sports medicine clinic and more.

The department serves approximately 6,000 paid members – made up of 90% students, 5% university staff, and 5% members of the public. Around 69% of the student population engage with the department’s offerings that include free fitness classes, volunteering opportunities, it’s Bristol Moves rewards app, performance sport and more.

Challenge: Different login details for app

The University of Bristol first went live with Legend’s leisure management software across its Sport, Exercise and Health department in April 2017. Since they’ve benefited from the breadth and flexibility of the features on offer within the Legend platform. Including the comprehensive reporting that makes effective decision-making easy.

When new students and staff join the university, an API integration with the student and staff database automatically creates accounts in Legend. That means no manual data entry and no need to sign up. With single sign on (SSO), students and staff use their university login credentials (authenticated via their identity provider, Microsoft Azure AD) to access the university’s sports and fitness services via Legend’s digital member services portal. Easy and secure!

Knowing how seamless and easy this makes it for students and staff to access this portal, and with many using the app, the university wanted to make the app accessible via SSO too.

The Legend app, powered by myFitApp, and branded as the University of Bristol Sport App, lets students, staff and other members book, access on-demand classes, manage their membership and more. A separate account and password was needed to login to the app – creating friction and presenting a security risk.

Solution: Extending single sign on to the app

In 2022, the University of Bristol, Legend and myFitApp teams partnered on a project to roll out SSO to the Legend app too for the university’s students and staff.

The project ran smoothly. Students and staff can now log into the app seamlessly and securely using the same university login credentials they use for the Legend digital member services portal and other university systems.

Results: Increased app use and engagement

By working in partnership with Legend & myFitApp to extend single sign on (SSO) for students and staff to the Legend app, the University of Bristol has:

Improved data security
- Removed a barrier to make accessing activity easier
- Increased engagement with as many as 40,000 app uses through
- SSO each fortnight (up from 14,000 each fortnight)

“Thanks to the close work we’ve done with the development teams at Legend and myFitApp, students and staff can now login to the app seamlessly and safely. That’s one less password to remember, and one less barrier to engaging in physical activity – a win all round! We now see as many as 40,000 app uses through SSO a fortnight. That’s significant as we have 25,000 students and 3 sports sites.”

– Arron Godfrey, deputy business development manager, University of Bristol

“We were pleased to partner with the University of Bristol and Legend to introduce single sign on using Microsoft Azure AD to the app. This improvement makes it easier for the University of Bristol and other higher education institutions to let students and staff seamlessly and securely access the Legend app.”

– Jonathan Cooke, chief commercial officer, myFitApp Read more: https://www.legendware.co.uk/resources/university-of-bristol-case-study/

Inverclyde Leisure - A compelling & economic solution

Inverclyde Leisure is a registered charity who focus on giving back to their community through sport, leisure and health in Inverclyde, Scotland. The charity operates a wide range of facilities, including community halls, parks and pitches, sports centres, health and fitness facilities, swimming pools, an ice rink, a golf course and an athletics stadium.

Challenge: Seeking A Partner For Transformation

When Inverclyde Leisure appointed Kieron Vango as Chief Executive in mid- 2013, the trust operated a total of thirteen facilities including five gyms, two pools, three outdoor pitches, three sports centres and a large leisure centre with an ice rink. The trust was under pressure to improve its financial performance.

Solution: Business Transformation

The trust choose to partner with Legend to power transformation and improve financial performance.

Working to a three-year business transformation plan, our team completed the first phase – a new front of house platform – smoothly and ahead of time. This allowed Inverclyde Leisure to progress to phase two ahead of time. Recognising the value of having an end-to-end leisure management solution, the decision was reached to award the phase two tender to Legend. We delivered a new IT platform, networks and telephony.

The Legend platform what used to introduce a three-tiered membership programme, alongside online joining. Finally, Inverclyde decided to implement our fully outsourced Direct Debit collections service.

“We started with a business review. The analysis produced interesting conclusions. We had to rethink our service offering and put the customer experience at the heart of our plans. It was evident we could grow revenues in several areas. We could also implement significant cost savings. Most glaring though was the lack of good information to run the business. The conclusion was that we needed a solid technology platform to take the business forward.”

- Kieron Vango, chief executive, Inverclyde Leisure

Results: Transformation Achieved Ahead Of Plan

In partnership with Inverclyde Leisure, the business transformation plan was achieved a year ahead of schedule. The operator saw membership income increase, swimming lesson income grow, time saved, and collection rates grow.

“Overall, it’s an astonishing story. Whereas 24 months ago we had zero online bookings, today over 70% of bookings are done online. I am hugely proud of what we have achieved. It would have been impossible to achieve these improvements and savings without the technology platform Legend provides.”

- Kieron Vango, chief executive, Inverclyde Leisure