ABC Fitness Solutions supported by new club management and member engagement capabilities atop its billing and payment services.
The new name, which originally was to be announced in March but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was motivated by three things, ABC Fitness Solutions President and CEO Bill Davis told Club Industry. First was to convey the company’s commitment to the fitness industry specifically.
“When you say ABC Financial Services, it's not really clear what ABC did,” he said. “We wanted to be absolutely certain the industry that we love and support knows that we are fully behind them.”
The second reason was to show the company was committed to finding the most comprehensive integrated club management solution in the marketplace, he said, noting that is reinforced by the company’s recent acquisitions around sales module capabilities as well as personal training capabilities.
“That’s only going to continue to be enhanced as we bring internally developed solutions, including our totally reimagined and modernized revenue-cycle management capabilities,” Davis said. “And we'll be talking more and more about what is on the horizon in terms of our next generation club management solution, which we are going to continue to have exciting developments and announcements around as we go into 2021.”
The third reason was to convey ABC’s commitment to innovation, he said.
“We think this industry can benefit significantly from a thought leader in terms of how technology can be more extensively used to really create what we are increasingly calling a total fitness experience,” he said. “And that’s the bringing together of the fitness club itself to the people that are delivering the fitness experience to the programming, and we think that it’s the technology that really provides that connectivity around all three of those essential elements but also for club operators to extend beyond the four walls of their clubs.”
He added that the need for club operators to move beyond their brick and mortar locations have been highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABC Fitness Solutions, which serves about 16,000 clubs, now offers six modules that make up holistic club management: member acquisition, member management, member engagement, club administration, reporting and analytics, and revenue-cycle management.
The company recently made multiple acquisitions to create this holistic offering. In July, it purchased GymSales as its member acquisition module to capture, nurture and convert prospective members. Through an exclusive partnership with Openpath, ABC introduced in August ABC Door Access by Openpath as part of its club administration module. Integrated access control solution makes it possible for health clubs to implement hands-free entry to improve safety and sanitation. In September, it also purchased Trainerize, which is the keystone to its member engagement module. Through the tightly integrated mobile and wearable applications, Trainerize powered by ABC delivers virtual and onsite training, nutritional planning and habit coaching all are paramount to being competitive and creating revenue models that are not dependent on gym attendance.
The company also recently introduced its next generation revenue-cycle management (RcM), which has been reimagined to manage any kind of subscription or payment model, whether session-based, one-time, bundled or usage-based. ABC’s RcM 1.0 was generally released in July and RcM 2.0 aims to be ready later this year, according to the company.
ABC Fitness Solutions is a Thoma Bravo portfolio company. Thoma Bravo is a private equity firm focused on investing in software and technology companies. It purchased ABC in 2017.