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USICERINKS.COM SEPTEMBER.OCTOBER.2018/ 35 Significant Benefits Benefits from utilizing technology in a facility can be achieved in four distinct, but complementary areas: 1. Cost savings 2. Productivity improvements 3. Revenue enhancements 4. Increased customer satisfaction Cost savings can be achieved in a variety of areas, ranging from eliminating the need to hire additional staff, to the energy savings realized by using arena control systems. Delivering critical business information on a timely basis is the function of technology. You won't need to hire additional people to produce invoices, calculate usage statistics, maintain inventory levels, handle increased enrollments, or schedule the increased ice time available when upgrading from a single to a multiple-sheet facility. Software solutions empower your current staff to accomplish these tasks and more. Significant cost savings through lower energy bills can be achieved by implementing technology to control the refrigeration, lighting, and heat levels in a facility. Productivity improvements are realized in a variety of ways. Whether you use software to schedule six months worth of ice on two rinks in four hours or to instantly produce a schedule for your 12-team adult hockey league, technology will boost the productivity of your staff. Time and accurate reporting is a natural byproduct of automation and allows facility management to immediately respond to changing trends in the arena industry. Errors are greatly reduced, which allows rink personnel to spend more time with customers and less time fixing mistakes. Simply put, technology makes you and your staff more efficient, and efficiency is money. Effective use of technology both directly and indirectly enhances revenue for an arena. Harnessing the power and convenience of the internet directly contributes to revenue by allowing a facility's open ice times to be available for customers to view and/or purchase online. Posting skating classes on a web site and allowing customers to register and pay for those classes over the Internet not only enhances revenue, but also greatly reduces the staff costs necessary to administer those functions. Indirectly, using software to research and capture important customer data allows facilities to create customized target marketing programs designed to increase revenue and attract new customers. Perhaps the greatest benefit of utilizing technology to improve operations comes from improved customer satisfaction. Think of the positive experience a customer would have in the following scenario: An adult hockey team arrives for a game at your facility confident that they are in the right place at the right time because a professionally produced schedule was e-mailed to them earlier in the year. Two of the players lost their schedules, but they visited your web site and confirmed what time they needed to be there without having to call anyone. Players arrive at the facility and look at the monitors conveniently located EFFECTIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGY BOTH DIRECTLY AND INDIRECTLY ENHANCES REVENUE FOR AN ARENA. USICERINKS.COM SEPTEMBER.OCTOBER.2018 / 35