Three Ways Boutique Fitness Studios are Automating Operations with Custom Software

Explore how top fitness businesses are using the latest automation trends to scale at pace, while minimizing human effort and error

Leaning into automation can grow a fitness franchise by 66% in one year. At least, that was the case for Fitstop, which has seen monumental growth the past two years. Automation has been one of the biggest drivers of business growth in the last century (some even attribute the last industrial revolution to the creation of automation). Many of today’s most successful gyms owe their growth partially to investments in automation – from Pure Barre to Orangetheory Fitness.

Hapana is an end-to-end fitness studio management software solution that keeps a finger on the pulse of automation trends in order to custom design software for its  clients, like BFT, KX Pilates, F45 and Gold’s Gym. Here are three ways Hapana uses automation software to modernize boutique fitness studios and global gyms.

1: Automating Sales to Free up Time

Automating sales can be one of the best returns on investment and lets humans do what they do best. Freeing up your sales staff from tedious administrative tasks – such as  following up leads with tailored messaging. allows them to focus more on face-to-face interactions.

Hapana focuses on automating the sales pipeline through its platform GROW , which includes the following features:

• Automated lead capture
• Automated email campaigns and social media
• Optimized conversions, guiding prospects through customized landing pages

Hapana developed its sales automations after noticing this trend take hold in businesses like Pure Barre, which set up hundreds of custom business automation rules for its SMS and email marketing channels as the company began to scale into Asia .

2: Sync or Swim: Automating Data Comparison

Data comparison is starting to move from the trend phase to the non-negotiable phase. Automating the data of your different franchise locations lets you analyze membership growth trends, attendance rates, and revenue performance across multiple locations.

There are some instances in business where automation works in the background, and some places where it really shines – this is one of them.

One example is KX Pilates, which uses Hapana to automate its  data comparison across all clubs. By using Hapana’s advanced automation capabilities, KX Pilates can track and compare the statistics across locations. This gives them real metrics to back up their decisions, and move beyond guesswork on the driving factors behind overall club performance.

This type of data collection is especially useful for boutique fitness studios or gyms looking to scale. Hapana designed its  complementary tools CORE and DASH for this purpose.

3: Using Automation to Reduce Risk in Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping isn’t the most fun activity in the world – even for people who love numbers. Automation takes the friction out of bookkeeping while reinforcing security by minimizing manual entry and reducing the risk of human error. By automating bookkeeping, you can save time and limit the number of touchpoints where mistakes can happen.

Hapana prioritizes the financial well-being of gym owners and members by incorporating secure payment gateways and automatic billin g into its software.

Prospective boutique studios can set up their membership subscription software on a secure platform to automate payments, customize billing cycles based on membership types and location, and have complete visibility of invoices, late fees and overdue accounts.

This streamlined financial process builds confidence among members, knowing their transactions are handled with the utmost security.

Automation Software vs. Generative AI

Automation is not the same as generative AI. Generative AI is not built to automate processes,rather, it’s designed to provide a small boost of speed to existing staff. This is important to keep in mind when selecting automation software to avoid making a costly mistake.

As Goldman Sachs’ Jim Covello said , “Currently, AI has shown the most promise in making existing processes—like coding—more efficient, although estimates of even these efficiency improvements have declined, and the cost of utilizing the technology to solve tasks is much higher than existing methods. For example, we’ve found that AI can update historical data in our company models more quickly than doing so manually, but at six times the cost…

“Humans add the most value to complex tasks by identifying and understanding outliers and nuance in a way that it is difficult to imagine a model trained on historical data would ever be able to do,” Covello added.

Goldman Sachs is invested in the success of generative AI – but it still released a comprehensive report essentially concluding that generative AI does not have a proper use case, does not produce meaningful revenue, and has unsustainable costs.

Plus, OpenAI itself likely cannot be scaled because it would require enormous capital expenditure and an expansion of the electricity grid on a scale that  hasn’t been seen in recent history.

Automation software, however, is dependable and effective. Make sure to differentiate when looking for the best automation software, and never forget that automation is there to free up your staff to provide the real selling point: community, connection and the human touch.

Read more about automation trends in Hapana’s latest free ebook .

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