Think Different

The golf industry has to start thinking differently.

The golf industry is a very exciting yet frustrating industry to be a part of in these times of constant technology changes. It amazes me how many golf businesses, and yes they should at least be thought of as businesses continue to bury their heads in the sand and do not embrace technological advancements.

There are still a great number of golf courses using the standard cash registers that were utilized in the 60's, 70's , and 80's says Dave Cowan a golf industry consultant marketing manager for the NGCOA.

Information is the key to improving your business. Information, not just about your expenses and revenues, but about your customers is vital. You have to know who you're customers are, where they are coming from, what they are buying and how often they are buying at a minimum. Too often I see golf courses making decisions based on not only a lack of information but even worse on completely erroneous anecdotal information provided by the front line people who think they know their customers. Courses make major capital investments in areas of their operation whoch they feel their customers want to see improved. The major capital outlay is handled well sometimes and sometimes not handled well. But alot of the time the investment is made in an area that the customer, the reason you are in business, does not care about. The cusotmers would like improvements in other areas.

Golf Courses have to at a minumum have a POS system to track purchases of their customers. This will provide vital feedback for what is selling and what is not and who you're best customers are.

There are numerous good POS systems out there many which integrate the POS with an Electronic Tee Sheet, and accounting software as well. One of the best is Jencess, a Canadian company. It gives you a complete online suite of products to run your entire golf business.

If golf course operators would like to see their bottom line imrpove, the first thought shouldn't be where can we cut expenses. Rather it maybe should be where can we INTELLIGENTLY invest in technology to provide accurate, timely and productive information to help us improve our decision making