Case Study
Digitally Transforming the Paper Punch Card and a COVID-19 Pivot
A complete digital transformation that replaced physical punch cards with a progressive web application, expanding market reach from 1.5 million to 210 million potential customers
Challenge
The Challenge
The fitness industry continues to experience tremendous growth, creating opportunities for savvy entrepreneurs. After several years of increasing success, a fitness company was ready to scale fast.
The founders realized their current system involving physical paper punch cards was not equipped to handle a growing local customer base, let alone their market expansion plans. The manual process created operational bottlenecks, limited their geographic reach, and made it impossible to gather meaningful customer data.
Their unique value proposition and punch card loyalty system had proven successful locally. If digitally transformed, this concept would enable the company to scale seamlessly with nearly limitless market expansion potential.
With an understanding of the problem, the founders approached R2 to discuss how best to transform their enterprise to meet newfound demand and scale into the future.
Approach
The Approach
Understanding that non-venture backed startups have limited financial resources, R2 devised a strategy that would digitally transform their fitness service without breaking the bank.
Our Product Development experts proposed a strategy that was cost effective, time efficient, and requires minimal infrastructure maintenance and support. The key insight was that a Progressive Web Application would deliver the best of both worlds: web accessibility with native app experience.
Rather than building separate native iOS and Android applications, which would require maintaining multiple codebases and going through app store approval processes, a PWA approach would give the fitness company a single codebase that works everywhere.
This approach dramatically reduced development time, ongoing maintenance costs, and time-to-market while still delivering a premium user experience across all devices.
Solution
The Solution
The proposed solution encompasses a complete technology-oriented digital transformation, inclusive of a Progressive Web Application and a robust API backend on scalable cloud infrastructure with the ability to auto-scale on demand.
Digitally transforming the paper punch card concept required R2 to leverage existing QR scanning technology and adapt it to the custom PWA. Customers can now check in at any participating fitness studio by simply scanning a QR code with their phone, automatically logging their visit and updating their punch card digitally.
The dynamic application architecture adds flexibility where administration users can customize the application as they see fit. This built-in flexibility allows scalability and the ability to add future enhancements without the need for a major overhaul.
The PWA delivers multiple advantages: it looks and feels like a mobile app but is lighter weight in comparison, completely responsive and sized appropriately for all device types, discoverable on search engines, and accessible via both app stores and direct web access. Best of all, the fitness company did not have to choose between web or mobile, or between building a native Android or iOS app. They get all of the above with a single solution.
Solution
COVID-19 Pivot
Coming into the originally planned final sprints of development, the novel coronavirus reached US shores. This necessitated a pivot and application re-architecture to accommodate state-specific stay-at-home orders and the closure of most gyms and fitness studios throughout the nation.
R2 was happy to devise and implement a solution free of charge. The pivot entailed the ability to dynamically alter what was previously static content without the need to redeploy the application each time content is modified or added.
The new dynamic content management system enables the fitness firm to quickly update offerings, add virtual workout options, modify studio availability, and communicate COVID-specific policies to users in real-time.
This pivot solution now enables the fitness company the flexibility to cater to both B2B customers (gyms and studios) and B2C customers (individual fitness enthusiasts) whether or not stay-at-home measures are in place. The platform proved its resilience by adapting to dramatically changed market conditions.
Details
The Results
The platform launched on June 12th, 2020, delivering a complete technology-based digital transformation that opened multiple new sales and marketing channels.
The technical implementation featured PostgreSQL database, Ionic 5.0 Framework, Node.js backend, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk with S3 for scalable cloud infrastructure. The application is compatible with all devices including mobile, tablet, laptop, and desktop, discoverable on all major search engines, and available on both the Apple App Store and Google Play with flexible login options via Facebook or account creation.
The impact on market potential was dramatic. Before digital transformation, the Total Available Market was limited to 1.5 million B2C customers aged 18 and over in their local region, with access to just 711 fitness studios and gyms. After digital transformation, the Total Available Market expanded to 210 million B2C customers nationwide, with potential partnerships across 38,477 fitness studios and gyms.
Key benefits delivered include complete technology-based digital transformation, multiple new sales and marketing channels, increased scalability with nearly limitless expansion potential, autoscaling infrastructure and resource provisioning, and significant overhead cost reduction by eliminating print marketing collateral and paper punch cards.