Greater Manchester marketing and design studio Cornerstone has launched a new digital interface for the leisure, health and wellness industry, allowing disparate data from multiple membership systems to be aggregated into one customer journey.
Christened Cornerstone Connect, the new Application Programming Interface (API) enables different apps to exchange information with each other in real time to create a more cohesive and streamlined portrayal of members’ activities, changing exercise habits and preferences – especially valuable over a long period of time.
It is a GDPR-compliant solution to a problem that has occupied the thoughts of founder and MD, David Wadsworth, since his Oldham-based company started working with public and private sector leisure operators 14 years ago.
With several operators already signed up to the new API, Wadsworth discussed its origins and benefits at the latest LFX conference, where LFX founder and leisure industry stalwart, Graeme Hind, described it as “revolutionary.”
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LFX is made up of over 40 leisure operators and industry third parties, who meet regularly to share and evolve ideas, and Wadsworth told the gathering at Bolton Arena Community Sports Village that while one of the biggest challenges facing the industry used to be a complete lack of customer data, now it is too much data, and worse still, fragmented data.
He said: “This is groundbreaking, to the best of our knowledge. It’s the first system that will actually allow the consumer to engage with a leisure brand holistically and not just an individual part of it. We can collect preference data and usage data across different platforms like no one’s ever been able to before.
“That then allows for operational benefits and efficiencies, and customer and commercial improvements in terms of better cross-selling and upselling; we can do timely delivery of certain tasks, activities and promotions direct to the user.
“It’s completely customer centric – we’re putting the power back in the consumer’s hands while empowering the provider with joined up data. And it’s proven technology that’s being used by big commercial players across the globe, such as Apple, Amazon, Ikea, Microsoft and Assos.”
The catalyst for making Cornerstone Connect a reality, said Wadsworth, was the launch of a two-way, more open API by Gladstone, whose leisure management system (LMS) serves 500 health and leisure operators with approximately 40,000 users and 8m members.
Since then, Cornerstone and Gladstone have worked together to integrate Cornerstone Connect into its interface.
The idea for the Cornerstone Connect API first came about when a leisure trust client approached Wadsworth about enhancing data on patients being referred to it via a NHS GP referral programme, so they could follow how they interacted with the trust, if at all, after the programme ended.
Mindful of the transformation to active wellbeing prevalent throughout the industry, Wadsworth said he thinks the API could benefit leisure trusts in supporting NHS referral patients, and also the NHS itself in years to come.
He added: “In discussions we’ve had with the NHS, it has the exact same data sharing problems that leisure does, but just on a grander scale with hospitals across different locations not being able to see the same data. I think this kind of solution can be applied in so many settings.”
