You may recall the fantastic time that you had last summer at your employer’s annual golf outing. You showed up to play at sunrise and were served drinks, on-demand, for the entirety of the day. You ordered lunch between the ninth and tenth hole, and if your foursome scrambled well, you might have even brought home a trophy at the banquet dinner. While you lived the good life, the golf course operator likely experienced a stressful day on the job.
Unbeknownst to you or your colleagues, your annual work outing required meticulous planning. Weeks before your event, supplies were ordered, received, and inventoried. The kitchen, bar, grounds crew, and golf shop teams had several coordination meetings. The night before the event, the golf shop stayed late to stage 70 golf carts and the driving range. Meanwhile, the restaurant and bar were staffed and stocked, and 150 acres of property were mowed and perfectly manicured, all before you first hit snooze on your iPhone.
Jason Pearsall, CEO of Club Caddie, understands the difficulties of operating a golf course well because he was managing partner of a semi-private golf course in Michigan when he and his team first started building Club Caddie. "We were using nearly a dozen different programs to run our operation. Our bar software didn’t talk to our banquet software and our golf-shop and tee-sheet software didn’t communicate with our member management system. To make things worse, none of our solutions integrated with our accounting program. We knew that disparate technology was contributing to our entire operation feeling like a mess and that we could do better."
It’s difficult to build the right software workflow to address a problem if, as a technology company, you are unable to empathize with the people that deal with those issues on an everyday basis
In 2015, Pearsall and Club Caddie’s co-founders resolved to remedy the problem by building one of the leading all-in-one, cloud-based, golf management systems. "With limited staff and resources, owners and operators of golf courses and country clubs manage several small businesses at once,” explained Pearsall. “Our software is designed to keep staff on the same page, and to streamline operations so that the profit centers within a golf course can work together as a single and cohesive team."
To handle the needs of even the most complex golf course operations, Club Caddie offers a plethora of modules, all built into a single platform, including a point-of-sale, event and venue management system, food and beverage solutions, automated customer marketing, member billing, accounting, and all-in-one business intelligence reports. Pearsall attributes the success of Club Caddie to his team’s ability to intimately understand the nuances of running a golf course. “It’s difficult to build the right software workflow to address a problem if, as a technology company, you are unable to empathize with the people that deal with those issues on an everyday basis.”
As part of its offering, Club Caddie also includes a sophisticated reservation system that enables golfers to book tee times online or through a branded mobile app, as well as to reserve activities like lessons, golf simulators, and tennis courts. "Over the last few years, golfer’s spending habits have changed,” Pearsall explained. “Increasingly, golfers are looking to book reservations and to register for activities and events online." In light of Covid-19, many golf facilities using Club Caddie are even requiring pre-payment of reservations and utilizing the system’s contactless check-in capabilities.
Club Caddie’s technology has quickly been recognized by industry leaders. In February of 2020, Club Caddie was acquired by the darling of the Toronto Stock Exchange, Constellation Software (TSE: CSU). After being acquired, Club Caddie joined a prestigious portfolio of vertical market hospitality companies that operate under the umbrella of Jonas Software and that combine to service over 2,000 golf courses. It’s no coincidence that Club Caddie’s portfolio of clients has more than doubled since the company’s acquisition. “We were fortunate that Jonas saw the potential of our product, and our team and retained Club Caddie’s founders to operate the company,” Pearsall said. “Not only has Jonas provided us with every necessary resource to scale our technology, but they’ve also provided us with nearly three decades of learned experience.”
Running a golf course involves operating several small businesses at once. Informed by their founder’s experience owning and operating a full-service, semi-private golf course -- the Club Caddie team builds industry-leading, cloud-based technology that makes the operation of a golf facility more efficient and more profitable. The next time you’re playing in your annual golf outing, thank the staff for their hard work. Then, do management a favor and recommend that they check out Club Caddie.
