CASE STUDY

Top European chain Fitness World ‘Gluugles’ itself to growth

Fitness World is preparing itself for further growth. As a part of this Fitness World has implemented common work processes for the chain’s 182 centres. The pivot is the Danish software platform Gluu which helps to quickly spread best practices across the chain. Learn how Gluu is proving to be so effective for Fitness World in this process documentation case study.

Process documentation case study

The path towards the top of the European health and fitness market goes through common business processes. This is the idea behind Fitness World’s optimisation program “Our processes”. A program that uses the Danish software platform Gluu to bring together managers in 182 fitness centres in Denmark and Poland to help optimise daily operations.

“Through more than 500 processes covering everything from ordering toilet paper to Group finance Gluu’s online platform now binds headquarters and centres closer together. This strategic initiative has created a common way of working. And all roles, from management to staff in each centre, is to use and improving common processes in the Gluu platform,” explains Rikke Nissen Sigdal, Business Development Director at Fitness World.

“Since the Summer we have been working to establish a standardised way of working from the main office, via the regions and into the individual fitness centres. The work is well underway. Now in 2018, we’re improving the processes continuously so that we can quickly eliminate waste and streamline the operation. Gluu gives us the overview and detail to dive in and find practical improvement opportunities. One of the most visible results is in our employee onboarding.”

How Fitness World ensures common standards for work

Fitness World systematically collects ideas and issues from 280 employees by allowing them to comment on all their relevant processes. An idea from one centre can quickly become a new standard for all to follow. Therefore, best practices are quickly disseminated from one centre to all.

“Let’s say that they must put up new lighting in a centre. The centre manager then searches for ‘electrician’ in Gluu and finds the process of booking the craftsman and the local electrician, who we work with. This saves time and ensures that the task is performed correctly the first time. As a result, questions are added directly to the process in Gluu. Which means that process owners answer each question only once. This eliminates a lot of emails and phone calls,” explains Rikke Kannegaard, the Operations Director at Fitness World.

“Internally people are now saying “just Gluugle it”

…adds Rikke Sigdal.

The Gluu platform is a pivotal tool for business improvement in companies throughout the world.

“We see that process improvement happens almost by itself when we give the right tool to the employees who actually perform the work every day,”

says Søren Pommer, founder of Gluu.

Results so far

• 70% of changes to processes are estimated to be real improvements.
• The first six months saw 19,000 user sessions in Gluu by the 280 Fitness World managers, or 200 sessions per manager per year.
• 80% of users use Gluu at least once per month, whereas 60% uses it once per week or more.

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We hope you enjoyed this process documentation case study. Please check out our further reading if you’re looking for more information on how to improve your business’ processes or for more of our case studies.