Using Data to Make Better Decisions

Every booking, cancellation, session, roster change, hour worked, incident, review and payment at a centre is a piece of data. Most of it is recorded somewhere and almost none of it is used to make decisions. Programmes are set by habit, prices by guess, staffing by instinct and marketing by whoever shouts loudest at the committee meeting. Yet the data to make those decisions well already exists in most centres' systems; it only needs to be looked at. This article covers how to turn the data a centre already has into decisions that grow it.

Start with the decisions, not the data

The mistake is to begin by gathering everything and hoping insight appears. Begin instead with the handful of decisions that matter each year: which courses to run and when, what to charge, how many instructors to employ and for which weeks, where to spend the marketing effort, which boats to replace, which partnerships to pursue. For each, ask what information would make the decision better. Then go and find that information. The questions decide what data is worth the effort.

Which courses, and when

The data: places offered, places sold and completion by course type, format, month, day of week and time, over two or three seasons. The decisions it informs: which courses to add dates for, which to drop or redesign, which formats fill, which weeks are short of capacity and which have too much. A simple table of fill rate by course and month usually shows two or three clear changes worth making, and it replaces the annual argument about whether anyone wants the Tuesday evening course.

What to charge

The data: fill rate and speed of filling by course at the current price, margin per course at typical fill, what comparable experiences cost locally, and what happened to bookings when prices last changed. The decisions: where there is room to raise prices, where a lower midweek price would fill empty slots, which discounts earn their keep. A course that sells out within days of release is telling you something about its price.

How many staff, and when

The data: bookings by week against instructors rostered, hours worked against hours needed by the ratios, the sessions that ran tight or short, the sickness pattern, the proportion of staff who returned. The decisions: how many to recruit, which weeks need more, which qualifications are short, whether the standby arrangement is adequate, whether the pay and conditions are keeping people. A roster and time system that records the actual against the plan produces most of this without extra work.

Where to market

The data: how each new booking found you, which campaigns and channels produced enquiries and bookings, the conversion rate from taster to course, from course to the next course, from course to membership. The decisions: where the hours and the small budget go, which tasters to run, whether the follow-up emails are working. Ask every booking the source question and the answer appears within a season.

Which boats to replace

The data: faults and days out of service per boat, maintenance cost per boat per year, usage per boat, age and resale value. The decisions: which boats are costing more than they are worth, which types the programme actually needs, when the renewal fund must be spent. The fleet register with its fault log is the source.

Who is at risk of leaving

The data: customers whose last booking was more than a year ago, members who have not used the club this season, juniors whose attendance is dropping, instructors whose hours and feedback suggest fatigue. The decisions: who to contact, what to offer, where the programme is losing people. Lists of the quiet ones, produced monthly, are where retention actually happens.

Where safety is under pressure

The data: near-miss and incident reports by theme, location, course type and time; the sessions where ratios were tight; the equipment faults; the weather cancellations. The decisions: which procedures to review, where to add cover, what to train, which limits to adjust. The incident log read as a set rather than as individual events.

Make it a monthly page

None of this needs a data department. A single page, produced monthly by the office from the systems, with fill rates, margin by course, bookings by source, staffing against need, the quiet customers, the incident themes and the cash position, puts the data in front of the people making decisions at the moment they make them. The page takes an hour to produce once the systems are set up and saves many hours of debate.

Compare like with like

Data misleads when it is read without context. Compare this June with last June, not with July. Compare fill rates at the same price. Allow for the week the weather stopped everything. Look at trends over two or three seasons rather than single months. Small numbers are noisy; a course that ran twice tells you little.

Ask why before acting

The data points; it does not explain. A falling fill rate on the adult beginner course might be price, dates, a competitor, a change to the web page or a bad review. When a number moves, talk to the office, the instructors and a few customers before deciding. The combination of data and conversation makes good decisions; either alone makes poor ones.

Share it

A committee or a senior team that sees the same page makes decisions from the same facts, faster and with less argument. Instructors who see the fill rates and the review themes understand what their work produces. Data that is shared changes behaviour; data that is kept changes nothing.

Build the habit

Decide the questions. Set the systems to record what answers them, as a by-product of the day. Produce the page monthly. Read it, ask why, decide, act, and look again next month. Within a season the centre is making its programme, pricing, staffing and marketing decisions on evidence, and the evidence improves every time it is used.

This article is general guidance for RYA centres and clubs. Schemes, awards and requirements change — always check the latest official RYA guidance and your recognition paperwork before acting. ActivityRoster helps you run the rostering, qualifications and safety-cover side of all of this in one place.