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David Lloyd Clubs

At a general manager level, we have liberated them to understand their business…allowing them to make operational decisions in real-time. It’s been a great success I am really proud of what we have built’ Patrick Burrows, Chief Financial Officer, David Lloyd Clubs.

About David Lloyd Clubs

Established in 1982 David Lloyd Clubs is Europe’s largest leisure club providing a range of leisure activities including traditional gym, swimming, tennis, classes and socialising areas. They have 131 clubs across UK and Europe, with 700,000 members and employing 8000 people.

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The Challenge

They had a mix of different internal systems for reporting on business performance which all provided different numbers and made it difficult for any management decisions to be made.

Their reporting was largely static and there was a big demand for ad hoc data extracts from the business intelligence team so that users could create their own reporting in Microsoft Excel. As with many businesses, this “off-system” analysis created multiple versions of the truth and often with different logic used to calculate KPIs.

The Solution

The answer was to hold all their data in one place, with one set of data owners, so they have confidence their data is accurate and could be trusted. This liberated the business, especially the club managers to make smarter, quicker and more accurate business decisions about their individual clubs’ performance. David Lloyd Clubs also wanted to get more value from their data, establishing a data science team to find solutions for some of the more complex analyses needed by the business.

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Data strategy

A comprehensive strategy covering their processes, organisational structure and technology. Designed initially to establish control over their data and mange data risks, before looking at delivering value from data.

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Data Roadmap

Taking an iterative approach to building a data culture required working on a prioritised list of business needs. Focusing on delivering quick wins to bring the business on a journey of using data better.

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‘Golden Data’

Building a single version of the truth, “Golden Data” that is trusted, understood and accepted across the business. This was delivered iteratively one domain at a time.

The Outcome

Accurate and timely data available to the business decision makers to enable them to make the best decisions, including through mobile devices giving access whilst interacting with members in all areas of the club.

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Power BI

An easy to use and interactive set of KPI dashboards, allowing the business to self-serve their reporting needs. Freeing up the team at David Lloyd Clubs from providing data on request to focusing on innovative analysis.

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Modern Data Platform

Enable more forensic analysis and reporting across the business giving insights on their member count, revenue, food & beverage, mobile app engagement and club bookings with a Modern Data Platform in Azure.

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Data Science

Giving the data science team access to a data lake to solve complex problems with their choice of tools. This provided an opportunity to experiment and innovate with data rapidly, and focus on delivering business value.

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We built a modern data platform in Microsoft Azure, and what that has allowed us to do is combine lots of different data sources into one place. People know that one version of the truth, that ‘golden data’, that we are publishing is all going to lead back to that same number, and they are believe in it.

Laura McGill
Business Intelligence Manager, David Lloyd Clubs