Thorpewood Golf Academy

Meet Debra Hagger, golf facility manager at Thorpe Wood Golf Academy in Peterborough, UK. This academy has three Pros, all PGA Professionals. They used to have a very independent management system, with the office managing everything themselves. But they use the Thorpe Wood facility, and that’s how it worked for over ten years. This was the primary motivation for them to seek an administrative system to streamline this process. “The system we had was completely managed by ourselves, and it was very labor-intensive”, Debra explains, “We would be getting messages at 8 at night to do things.” The original system was slow, with 4,000 names to go through every single morning. “If someone had forgotten to turn on the hub computer, you’d have a customer waiting for 4,000 names to come out of a system. It was hard for the back-end user”.

“When we started researching a system and found ProAgenda, My colleague started speaking to Bob, and it rolled from there. We basically told him what we needed, and he did the training sessions with us”, Debra shares about their starting process. Their goal was to have their professionals manage themselves, so it was important that everyone had a full understanding of the system. Even though we are less tech-savvy people have been able to grasp it brilliantly. Anytime the pros have had any questions, we’ve jumped on an online meeting, and that’s been us”

‘With ProAgenda, they could do what they want without having to go through us.” Debra continues. It was important for them to have the freedom to change packages and smaller things without having to ask for them to be changed. Give them freedom while still operating within the guidelines of one academy. “It used to be very slow from the customer’s point of view, but with ProAgenda, we’re not having the constant queries. It was a constant cycle of having to try and manage people, whereas this has just taken that pressure completely off our staff.”

The system has been live for two months now, and Debra describes it as “an absolute breath of fresh air”. It took a lot of time for the administration and involved waiting for loading times. It gave Debra some much-needed relief from administration. When asked about the response from clients, see tells us: “We actually saw an uplift of bookings very quickly. People starting making bookings who hadn’t had bookings for a little while, and it actually gave as an uplift launching the new system.” The response from clients was very positive with the only feedback being that the agenda is ‘too booked’.

“We are very positive, honestly, we’ve been absolutely delighted’. ProAgenda fixed exactly what Debra needed it to. It put some relief on the administration, whilst giving freedom to their professionals. It even created busier agendas with the rebooking of older clients. “It’s made my workload go down. And it’s given our pros the ability to be able to manage their systems, their bookings, their calendars, how they want to.”