Crieff manages its bookings much more efficiently with BRS Golf

Installing the market-leading BRS Golf online diary and booking system has enabled the world famous Crieff GC to manage its massive booking administration task and workload much more easily and efficiently. Primarily used by the club’s members to book their tee times online, the BRS system is also used by the club’s Pro Shop team to manage the 12,000 rounds booked by its visitors throughout the year.

The net result is a significantly improved membership service and a standard of modern tee time administration by the club that matches its international reputation.

Crieff’s golfing pedigree and popularity

Golfers flock to Crieff because of its location and pedigree. The eighteen-hole Ferntower course has hosted the Scottish Boys and Youth Strokeplay Championships and is presently the venue for the P.G.A Scottish Championship qualifier and the regional heat of the Lombard Trophy (the world's largest Pro-Am). Besides the 18 hole Ferntower course, the nine-hole Dornock often makes up part of the Crieff experience as part of a thirty-six-hole package. This sort of pedigree and package adds enormously to Crieff’s popularity, as the 12,000 rounds booked every year demonstrate.

Crieff has been a favourite destination for local golfers, as well as society and holiday golfers, for many years. Voted as one of the Top 30 UK courses by Golf World readers, the popular club is only an hour's drive from Edinburgh and Glasgow where most of its members go to work. From a visitor’s perspective, it offers the ideal base for touring, being situated at the 'Gateway to the Highlands' with Gleneagles only ten minutes away and St. Andrews, Carnoustie and Blairgowrie only an hour.

With such a widespread membership and a very large intake of visitors, efficiently handling of tee time booking and management is vital. Good as a paper-based system can be, the potential for man-made error is ever-present and the degree to which such a system can be shared by others in the clubhouse is inevitably limited, so the club’s Professional who handles all the bookings was keen to see what benefits the newer online systems could deliver.

Online booking: very popular with Crieff’s membership

David Murchie is the Club Professional whose Pro Shop team handles all the tee bookings, and has been using the BRS system since its installation in December: “The BRS booking system enjoys universal popularity with the many members at Crieff, because they can now easily check to see what’s on, who’s playing and what times are available, from the convenience of their home and office.”

“Many of our members live around here but work in Glasgow or Edinburgh. Instead of having to come to the club, they can now go online and book a tee time, enter a competition, see who else is playing, and do all of this from the comfort and convenience of their home or office. The result is that there has been almost 100% acceptance of this new online way of doing things by the membership, and they see it as a major improvement in the service their club is delivering to them.”

BRS Golf: ‘A very good tool indeed.’

David is delighted with the BRS Golf system from his own perspective: “Being a members’ club, it’s essential that we have the tools for controlling and managing the booking of tee times to the members’ advantage. We originally used a paper-based tee sheet and booking system, and used in conjunction with the ‘phone it became a sound and efficient tool for us to control the thousands of visitor bookings we get every year.”

“However the BRS Golf system has made our handling of thousands of visitor bookings over the ‘phone more professional, much easier and generally quicker. There’s no doubt that people on the other end of the ‘phone notice the improved efficiency we can now deliver. The BRS Golf system is a very good tool indeed.”

The BRS Golf’s reporting and marketing benefits

A huge advantage that David and Crieff GC now enjoy over the older paper-based system is the ease with which the bookings can be condensed into reports and analysed. David also likes the range of the many reports that they can opt to do via the BRS system: “BRS gives us all sorts of reports at the click of a mouse, so that we know exactly what is going on. For example, we can see which groups have confirmed and paid for their bookings, who has paid their deposits and who hasn’t, so that it is easy for us to chase up the slower payers by e-mail for a cheque.”

“There is also the e-mail capture and database building that we can now do with no extra effort, and which combined with the Group email tool, enables us to market the club as well. It represents a huge advantage over clubs with paper-based diaries.”

These kinds of facilities are just some of the advantages of the online way of doing things now: “Looking back, the paper-base system was fine in as far as it went. But it was cumbersome, and the analysis we can now do at a click would have taken someone hours and days to do before.”

Popular with the Pro Shop team

David’s team much prefer the BRS system as well: “It was vital that my team in the Pro Shop found it easy to use. People can be very wary of technology, but I have to say that this piece of software is remarkably user-friendly and fully justified my staff’s investment in the training. It’s also been glitch-free and highly reliable. It’s a very useful administration tool for us.”

Great support

Any software is arguably only as good as the standard of support that the company that developed it delivers, and BRS Golf’s support is, as David testifies, every bit as good as the tool itself: “The BRS support desk is great. We knew we’d need to ask all sorts of questions, even after the very good online training, because there’s inevitably the need to recall something you were shown. BRS’s support has always provided us with fast and clear answers whenever we’ve needed to call it.”

Good for the members, ideal for Crieff

As the world’s golfing home with an unrivalled diversity of golfing experiences and destinations, Scotland’s many golf clubs find themselves in situations similar to Crieff with many members keen to play while needing to manage healthy numbers of visitors from all corners. And this is the point: Crieff is proof, if any more was needed, that in a 24/7 online world BRS is a huge advantage.

With its 330 customers enjoying a well developed and fully proven, highly versatile and well supported system, the BRS Golf system is easily the best of any of the online diary and booking tools a golf club can buy.