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A well-managed bar is a fantastic asset to any club or venue, and with Elite this could not be easier. The system looks at what information has been receipted in and is able to combine this with the sales and cost of sales data to generate reports which are user-friendly and easy to understand. The best way to ensure you are consistently making the desired returns, whilst balancing the ongoing challenges of wastage, stock holding and seasonal variances, is to make sure that the information entered into the Elite system is accurate, as without this the reporting will be inaccurate and it will be difficult to see where areas of the department may need to be improved. It is also important to be able to track and monitor revenues. In Elite, reports can be generated to give you an accurate snapshot of the business with live information from the system. Historic sales reports can also be printed and compared year on year, allowing you to consider other aspects which might affect sales e.g. weather, bank holidays. Here are a few tips to help manage stock effectively: Check purchases, have all invoices been allocated to the correct month and account code? Check wastage Check deliveries Check stock is always secured Check stock cost/sales item pricing. Take into consideration any variances/increases in the cost of stock Ensure all beverage stock is being receipted into stock correctly Calculate what the GP is of your beverage items Find out the cost of sales for…

As we are moving into shorter days, it's vital that courses are keeping a watchful eye on the tee sheet for opportunities available. Here are a few tips to help you manage your tee sheet. Tee Sheet Opening Time: Is it set in line with your courses opening time? Is there an opportunity to open the tee times earlier? Using The Back Nine As A Starting Point: Using the back nine from first light, gives you the opportunity to run special offers for a 9 hole green fee, for the first few hours of the day without impacting general play. Group Bookings: As we know, the numbers attending can drop before the day. It's important to keep in contact with the organiser on the run up to the day and if numbers drop, reduce the slots accordingly. Member Competitions: It's always advised to ensure you are checking the competition entry sheets, to ensure the slots booked reflect the entries. Confirming Visitor Bookings: There is nothing worse than looking at what you believe to be a busy tee sheet, but then upon review on the day you find loads of no-show bookings. If you are not charging deposits, it is advised to personally confirm the bookings with the customer 24 / 48 hours before. This is a great way to reaffirm the booking with them. Quieter Days: You will know the certain days and times for your course that have capacity. These are perfect to target Nomad golfers with special offers…

Since launching Elite Engage last year, we're really starting to see and hear many great success stories from clubs using this as part of their customer communications. Customer engagement is crucial for the success of businesses in a technologically connected society, the traditional method of using segmentation based campaigns to market to customers is gone! Now is the time to have a personalised message that is relevant, contextual and meets the customers expectations. Your customers are now expecting pre and post activity communications that ensures that their whole experience isn't just about the initial point of contact. Meeting this expectation is no longer optional; ignoring it will reduce the likelihood of having a returning loyal customer. Clubs want to measure the level of their customer service, so by adding a link to an online survey for all booking messages is a great way to engage with your customers, while others have used the booking reminders to promote special offers available ahead of a visit. Having the ability to create and amend content, allows messages to be relevant, up to date and provide a real impact on the target audience, the possibilities are endless, communication is under your power to control the content and links you can embed. The Elite Engage automated solution, saves valuable time and effort as once the communication is set up, the system knows who, when and what to send. Push notifications are powerful at engaging customers with the right message at the right time spurring engagement…

As we know, some of even the most avid golfers are opting against choosing a traditional club membership and instead playing different courses every week. This means despite the tough trading conditions and inclement weather, there is still an opportunity to promote and drive the nomad golfer paying a green fee. As the old saying goes,"Variety is the spice of life", So give golfers a taste by using Promotion Codes & URL Links. It's a great way to drive green fee revenue and encourage customers to book directly online with you! By using ESP Leisure's EliteLive and Online Promotions, you can target key days and times you wish to promote, tailoring the promotion around them. For example: You may find a 4-ball offer works well on certain days, or including a breakfast with the round of golf, or you just may want to offer a strong discount off the headline rate. These are also powerful tools to target key dates, when you know business will be slow. Drive your green fee revenues now with EliteLive Online Promo Codes & URL Links. https://www.e-s-p.com/products/online-booking/ To find out more, contact us at sales@e-s-p.com or 020 8251 5100

Did you know? Research shows that over 90% of teachers have effectively used videos during lessons and it has even been considered better than teaching students through traditional text-books. A major part of the human brain is devoted towards processing visual information. Videos can be watched just about anywhere on the planet, between the spread of the internet and mobile devices, more and more people choose educational videos over traditional paper text-books. One of the best benefits to visual video learning is that at any time you can pause, rewind and play. The combination of audio and visual content allows you to grasp information more easily. Manipulating the timeline in which you learn. That's why over the last few months we continue to get more and more positive feedback from our YouTube channel. As we continue to expand on its contents, ensure you subscribe and keep updated with the new age of learning! Just press play to start learning! ESP YouTube Channel  

Set in the grounds of the historic Packington Estate is Stonebridge Golf Club, a 27-hole championship golf course and wedding, conference & event venue on the outskirts of Coventry. Stonebridge has been using the ESP Elite system since 2013, and their General Manager Mr Kelvin Pugh has been on a nonstop mission enhancing all aspects of the venue. We caught up with Kelvin to find out how it's going and how he is benefiting from using the ESP Elite system at Stonebridge. How long have you now been at Stonebridge? I started at Stonebridge in 2011 as Golf Sales Manager then in 2015 I was promoted to General Manager. So Kelvin, 2019 looks to be another busy year. What have you been working on? We have recently undertaken a major refurbishment of our Spike Bar and our WC's. This has finished the ground floor refurbishment of the club making the club more welcoming to members and visitors as well as improving the building operationally meaning staff can work more efficiently. What are your plans for Stonebridge for the rest of the year? We are looking forward to showing off our new bar! The main thing we want to promote now is that we are more than just a golf club and help increase the business lines away from the golf so that the club isn't dependent on golf to be profitable. In saying that, we have some great plans for improving the course that we are working on and we…

      ESP Leisure joined our partner UKFast in attending their Annual UKFast Golf Day, hosted at the wonderful venue, The Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire, to which the course and the service levels were of the highest standards. On what was the hottest day of the year, the ESP/UKFast Team secured victory with a great team score. ESP work closely with UK Fast and host many of our own servers at their data centre in Manchester. They are the largest privately-owned hosting provider in the UK. They have earned over 18 years experience in cloud technology and dedicated hosting. Many of our customers who do not wish to have servers on site are also choosing to host their Elite systems with UKFast.      

ESP caught up with our Product Release Manager, Peter Holder to find out some more about him and his role within the company. How long have you worked for ESP? Just over 5 years now, since May 2014. What was your first role working for ESP? Implementation and Training Consultant. You have a background in golf club operations, how did you find this transition moving across to ESP? Did you find this background useful? Exceedingly useful! Prior to working at ESP I worked across multiple departments of a Golf Club for nearly 10 years; since working at ESP it has been invaluable for me to be able to understand many of the operational needs and challenges that are faced in the industry. The transition was at first daunting, but I quickly realised that there were even more similarities than I first thought and the new role was allowing me to continue to share and consult on best practices but with an even wider range of people. Tell us about your new role, what does it involve? My new role of Release Manager is really exciting for me; the main objective is to give structure to the processes for the release of new software and products. This includes being a part of the whole process including consultation on the design, testing of new functionality and communicating the updates to the team and through to customers. What are some of the projects you are working on? Currently the largest project underway is…

Do your end of day reports get interrupted by held transactions? Ever had a booking seemingly disappear off the system? Forgotten how to process payment request letters? ESPs' free online tutorials will help you learn more about the system and walk you through how to resolve these issues and many other quick wins. Taking place once a month, these sessions are designed to provide you, our valued customer, with tips and tricks on navigating the Elite system. The sessions deliver ongoing system best practice knowledge which can speed up or even eliminate these administrative tasks. The tutorials are conducted by one of our experienced trainers, through an online webinar and are attended by customers from all sectors and industries. Established in 2011, these tutorials have already proved to be a great tool in assisting our customers: What an excellent idea to watch the ESP tutorial. Looking forward to the next one. Warsash Sailing Club I think these sessions are great and very informative. Today we had about 12 staff who met for the tutorial. Although we do these ESP processes all the time, we are picking up small tips that speed up the tasks. Please keep these going! Thonock Park The next sessions? Liven up your summer this year with our Key Task Refreshers. From May to August, we will be focusing on refreshing your knowledge surrounding stock processes, the booking pricing matrix and Elite Live. Keep a look out for this month's session displayed on our website, here. You…

Want to know how to make greater use of the Elite system but too afraid to ask? This summer, the focus for the How Do I sessions is on key task refreshers. We are pleased to announce the forthcoming tutorial How Do I: Understanding the Booking Pricing Matrix on Tuesday 2nd July, 2019 at 11:00am. Sign Up Here *All training tutorials refer to our V6 Elite solution. If you would like to discuss upgrading, please contact your account manager. **There will be other users of the Elite Software on the web call, and therefore cannot be tailored to your individual site but will be a general guide. ***Sessions usually last up to an hour followed by a brief Q&A.