How Big Blue Swim School’s Proprietary, Enterprise Technology Helps Optimize Operations

Since its founding in 2009 by U.S. National Champion swimmer Chris DeJong, Big Blue Swim School is emerging as one of the dominant players in the $3 billion swim school industry. With 72 new locations signed across 17 states in less than a year and a half of franchising the brand, the company is on target to hit its goal of 150 franchise locations sold by 2021.

Here are some of the ways the Big Blue franchise system utilizes technology to stay nimble with a keen focus on innovation.

Technology and operations

Big Blue’s **proprietary LessonBuddy™ enterprise system has helped the brand lap the competition. The franchise’s cloud-based platform is designed so parents can easily schedule swim lessons and franchise partners can operate successful pools without needing a daily presence by serving up real-time data to the user. “Every 30 minutes, we receive progression data about students and how they are performing in the pool,” said Justin Waltz, Vice President of Franchise Operations.

“Big Blue uses** that data to modify staffing levels **to make sure we are hitting our goals every day of the week.”

The platform’s innovative dashboard gives pool owners the ability to create optimized class schedules, keep employees on track, manage swimmers and update billing. With more than 10 lanes across two 91-degree pools, owners can map out class times by age group and make it easy for parents of multiple children to attend classes at the same time. The customer relationship management tool ensures that everything is accounted for while helping managers maximize profitability.

While other franchisors use a third-party vendor to manage technology platforms, Big Blue’s in-house proprietary enterprise system gives franchise partners access to an unprecedented depth of consumer data and analytics that precisely address their needs. “Our enterprise management technology system is built to provide the swim school owner with the ability to optimize resource allocation and meet the customers exactly where they are,” said Big Blue CEO Chris Kenny. “The actionable insights that we get from LessonBuddy allow us to program optimized capacity planning for our pools and cut excess staff costs for franchise partners.****”

Big Blue is harnessing the benefits of cloud technology and disrupting the swim school space with its proprietary technology. “LessonBuddy is specifically designed to deliver a best-in-class swim lesson experience for our families and provide real-time information for our associates and franchise partners,” said Chief Technology Officer Casey Morford. “We’re able to unite the most important functions of our business model into one in-house technology system, which is impossible to find from a third-party platform.”

LessonBuddy includes easy integration with newer cloud-based applications, providing an integrated approach ensuring the brand is able to adapt and scale the platform to accommodate upcoming market trends and the needs of franchise partners as they scale their businesses.

“The power of Big Blue’s enterprise system is securely available anywhere there is an internet connection,” said Morford. “The beauty of having a cloud-based platform is that our consumer data and analytics are centrally stored and analyzed, which gives our franchise partners intelligence to help them make important business decisions on the spot.”

Real estate strategy

Big Blue leverages an experienced team of real estate pros to support franchise partners through site location, construction, and facilities management. The team has a tested, proactive, data-driven real estate strategy designed to locate an ideal site for the business. “This means we select locations that fall within our customer’s existing daily and weekly habits rather than placing locations requiring them to alter their current patterns,” said Scott Thompson, Big Blue’s Chief Development Officer.

“We are data-driven and we are nimble,” said Thompson. “We have the experience to scale quickly and we optimize a data-driven real estate assessment that identifies the prime real estate in trade areas. Next, we deploy operational team members for both pre- and post-opening support as part of our proven marketing strategy.”

As new franchise partners sign for units to develop, Big Blue’s real estate team finds grade A locations that fit the ideal customer demographics. Big Blue purposely identifies sites that are in the path of least resistance for their target customer’s daily lives and schedules.

As Big Blue continues to grow through franchising, its advanced, state-of-the-art technology ensures that each location is optimized for success. By using analytics for site selection, and LessonBuddy for optimization and operations, Big Blue is soaring past the competition.

Multi-unit opportunities are available for qualified candidates looking for their next big opportunity, and veterans can receive a 10 percent discount on the $75,000 franchise fee. The total investment necessary to begin operation of a new Big Blue Swim School is $1,825,500 to $3,687,000 (refer to item 7 in FDD)" To learn more or inquire about Big Blue Swim School, visit ***