Getting Health & Fitness Centers in Shape with IoT and Facilities Management Technology

ServiceChannel works with a range of partners in adjacent solution categories, bringing best-of-breed capabilities to the facilities management ecosystem. This is the next in a series of guest posts from our partners highlighting how these new technologies are driving innovation and real value across the enterprise.

Health & fitness club organizations face many challenges in operating and maintaining their facilities.  One very significant challenge is managing their fitness equipment, all combined, as it’s one of their most expensive assets.  The lack of accurate data surrounding this equipment affects many aspects of an organization’s operations of which maintenance, purchasing and liability exposure are but a few.

Are You Listening to Your Fitness Equipment?

Currently, at least one large fitness club organization specifies in their procurement documentation that fitness equipment status (critical, warning or normal and error information) and utilization data be fed automatically to their facility work order and asset management system.  This requires a comprehensive automated data collection system tied to the fitness equipment along with structured APIs to integrate this data into other platforms used for the actual management and reporting on this equipment.

For example, when one treadmill is not used for a given amount of time and other treadmills are, a flag goes up in the integrated work order and asset management portal indicating that a work order should be created for that machine.  In another instance, a step mill has accumulated the maximum number of hours before preventive maintenance should be performed. Again, this information is flagged and sent seamlessly through to the facilities work order and asset management solution to be addressed promptly and before larger issues arise.

This proactive approach to maintenance reduces facilities’ exposure to risk from damaged equipment, and provides a host of other accountability channels impacting warranty, service costs, manufacturer support and customer satisfaction.

Improving Fitness Center Service with IoT and Facilities Software

ECOFIT’s integration with ServiceChannel’s Service Automation platform is one example of using Internet of Things (IoT)-based sensor devices with a facilities management technology system to improve fitness equipment fix times, avoid equipment downtime and customer dissatisfaction, and deliver overall improved quality of service.  ECOFIT provides the real-time ground truths from the gym floor, enhancing the proactive service-related capabilities of ServiceChannel’s facilities software platform.

Utilizing advanced wireless sensors, ECOFIT captures operational data from virtually any piece of fitness equipment.  The data collected is processed using machine learning techniques to establish operational status and other metadata.  This information is securely stored for future API access.

Operational dashboards, advanced analytics and powerful third-party applications such as ServiceChannel’s utilize the raw and processed data in various ways to enhance product offerings.  ECOFIT technology is employed in hundreds of clubs and has been established for years.  The solution does not use or impede WiFi and is highly secure and scalable.

Driving ROI with Connected Sensor Technology

The last year has seen the rapid adoption of this technology by the world’s largest health & fitness club organizations with many single facilities utilizing upwards of 300 sensors.  The decision to network these facilities is made easily when double digit ROIs can be realized.

IoT automation enabled by ECOFIT and linked to service automation software powered by ServiceChannel is driving value and creating solutions across the health, gym and fitness industry in important ways:

• Mutual Accountability – Never wonder about the performance of your valuable fitness equipment assets.  Everything is monitored 24×7 and data is maintained for analysis and insights into reliability and lifetime value.  Reduce risks and improve performance.
• Proven ROI – Improve buying decisions, mitigate risk, improve service response, maximize equipment life span and improve customer satisfaction.
• A Service Ecosystem – Service providers have insights about preventive maintenance  and uptime, and you can manage your service ecosystem and automate functionality including warranty performance and uptime parameters.
• Broad Equipment Support – Sensors can be applied to all types of equipment, whether new or existing.

Gyms and health & fitness clubs now have an easy path to automated equipment monitoring and servicing.  With this monitoring along with facilities management integration comes rich data and exciting applications that are revolutionizing club operations.

Philip Rankine is a co-founder and COO of ECOFIT Networks.  ECOFIT has developed and implemented a unique, patented wireless technology specifically tailored to the fitness club market.  This technology provides long range, low power, non-WiFi connectivity for dense networks of fitness equipment. ECOFIT is a true “cross brand” solution, operating on any brand of fitness equipment.