The Pellucid Perspective - March 2023 - 8

INDUSTRY/OPERATOR
PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT
Colleague Stuart Lindsay has
forgotten more than I know about
the inconsistencies and landmines
in raw PoS data extraction to say a
database or even Excel. They are
legion but there are only a handful
which are major and consistent
across platforms.
business decisions (if you knew it). In our State of the Industry
presentation we referred to this in an emerging IT concept
called " dark data. " Dark data is all the information your business
(and customer) transactions collect which is unavailable
to view and, therefore, unusable. The image we used in the
presentation was an iceberg which has significantly more mass
below the water (your dark data) than above (the simple metrics
and reports your systems allow you to generate today).
One example is dynamic pricing or yield management. By
exporting or providing visibility to the future tee sheet, these
applications allow you to determine the strength or weakness
of future demand and make pricing adjustments (discount or
hold-the-line) that improve your revenue generation (importing
60-day forecast data will be the next cloud-enabled addon
even to that). What makes cloud and non-server access
valuable is that this data is now easily and securely made available
to service providers specializing in applications such as
this and many others. The previous catch-22 was that the data
was locked in the PoS system and the PoS providers couldn't
(wouldn't?) write the value-added applications so providers
like Pellucid couldn't put the dark data to good use.
That brings us to the 2nd trend propelling us toward eventual
benchmarking in my lifetime. Colleague Stuart Lindsay has forgotten
more than I know about the inconsistencies and landmines
in raw PoS data extraction to say a database or even Excel. They
are legion but there are only a handful which are major and consistent
across platforms. Once they're understood and mastered,
a) life gets much easier wrestling the raw data to the ground and
b) when hygiene and properly organized, the data tells consistent
and amazing stories. As many of you likely know, last year Pellucid/Edgehill
teamed up with Metolius Golf and found a kindred
spirit in Ross Liggett who was both trying to figure this out and,
intelligently, how to automate as much as possible the hygiene
and standardization of the data for each of 5 initial PoS partners.
They're nearing the end of that exercise with the first 3 providers
and we're providing some guidance and assistance along the way
so that what comes out of their system populates the Facility Performance
Scorecard and Customer Franchise Analysis that we
had previously built and implemented in FORE! Reservations.
Metolius is closing in on being able to sign a client on a Monday
and have the full range of our combined reports available by
8 The Pellucid PersPecTive
Wednesday and daily thereafter. That would be flat out amazing!
Which brings us to point 3 which is the age-old operatorskeptic
questions of " If you could do that, what would it tell me
and what different decisions would I make? " For starters, we'll
just port over to the Metolius platform the current GMRC measures,
reports and views that have been embraced by our Charter
Members and successfully used over the past 2 seasons:
* Monthly comparative reporting (current vs. same
period Year-Ago (YA)) for key metrics of Rounds,
Golf Revenue, Utilization and RevpAR. You may
not realize it but, in most of your PoS systems that's
a 2 report run, export to Excel and combine sheets/
formula exercise
* KPI scorecard, weather integrated for our 7 core
measures covering money, demand, pricing and discounting
on one page, for the current month and YtD
compared to YA
* Annual market summary data on rounds, golfers,
velocity and supply/demand levels. This allows for
an external perspective on how your facility's relative
size and share (of golfers, rounds) of the larger market
picture
We'll add in standardized departments revenue analysis.
You'll still be able to see your revenue and comparisons to YA
in your unique product codes (i.e. outings, promos, Sr. rates,
twilight etc.) but we'll also be standardizing all your SKUs
to 7 Pellucid/Edgehill departments (GFs, carts, membership/
season passes, F&B, Pro Shop etc.) which will be a helpful
view. This will also be the foundation for revenue-by-department
comparisons across facilities in the market when we get
to benchmarking. We'll also take advantage of the more dynamic
data refresh (daily updates) and flexible reporting (day
of week, end-of-week, month-to-date) aggregations to enable
users to see previously hidden trends and sooner.
For the final point, there have been several proof-of-capabilities
conversations since the beginning of the year with
both national and regional organizations who are coming
around to the applications and benefits of improved performance
measurement for their members and aggregation of
March 2023
The Pellucid Perspective - March 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - March 2023
