Case Study for Plas Y Brenin

Plas y Brenin, the National Mountain Centre, has a special reputation for offering residential outdoor training courses which are informal, challenging, high quality and fun. Plas y Brenin is located in the heart of Snowdonia with access to the high mountains and rivers as well as extensive facilities on site. In addition, Plas y Brenin is one of the few centres in North Wales to provide a full range of mountaineering equipment for hire.

The Problem

With many different facilities and a large number of courses on offer, Plas y Brenin’s existing bespoke legacy system was reaching the extent of its capacity and could no longer cope with the dramatically increasing customer throughput. "Our home-grown systems had served us well up to this point", said Sue Layland, IT Manager at Plas y Brenin, "but we were concerned about the increased demand on the centre in the future."

Centre resources needed to be managed more efficiently and bookings for events and accommodation needed streamlining.

The Solution

Plas y Brenin chose Reztec to manage their course scheduling, bookings and resource planning. Said Sue Layland: "Reztec offered us a solution that would move with technology and be flexible as we change and move with the times. I was most impressed with the Reztec team during the selection phase as they were keen to understand our complex processes and demonstrate how the software would meet our needs."

Reztec was specifically configured to meet Plas y Brenin’s requirements, allowing members of staff to have access to up-to-date information relating to activities, booking details and accounts. Before installing Reztec, members of staff had access to information through a series of spreadsheets and an Access database. Out-of-the-box, Reztec could not display the information in the required format, so iDynamics are working with Plas y Brenin to develop an interactive web-based module which retrieves and displays the relevant information from Reztec and allows staff to update it. This means that information can be viewed in a number of ways but needs to be entered into the system only once. It also means that the information can be accessed remotely.

Reztec also enables Plas y Brenin to record their course details using event templates which automatically specify the resource requirements at the time of booking. Using templates avoids the need to enter identical resource requirements each time a course is set up, so is particularly useful for frequently repeated events.

Further development work was undertaken by iDynamics to meet Plas y Brenin’s accommodation requirements. This resulted in a new residency module which allows a user to raise a request for a room at the time of booking without the need to specify the name of the person who will be occupying that room until nearer the course date. All residency requests can be viewed on a single screen so the centre can manage the bedrooms to best effect.

Another customised system enhancement enables Plas y Brenin to streamline the process of transferring delegates between courses, or cancelling the booking altogether, whilst applying the appropriate administration fee. Plas y Brenin also provides insurance cover for many of its activities and when a delegate transfers from one course to another, Reztec’s transfer wizard deals with the insurance cover according to the differing terms and conditions of the booking.

Plas y Brenin stores all its commercial information within the system, which is used to record customer details, create sales orders, generate invoice requests and produce comprehensive and detailed management reports. With both profit and non-profit-making units within Plas y Brenin, their accounting and reporting needs are complex. Plas y Brenin Mountain Training Trust is a VAT-exempt, non-profit-making organisation, linked to the Sports Council for England, and is responsible specifically for education. Plas y Brenin Mountain Training Ltd is a commercial organisation owned by Mountain Training Trust which manages the resourcing, accommodation and catering elements of the centre. Reztec has been configured to ensure that course fees are allocated to the appropriate cost centres and that funds are transferred accurately between the Trust and the limited company.

The Benefits

Sue Layland concluded: "With Reztec, we can manage our growth successfully. Staff have all the necessary information at their fingertips – from daily activity schedules to client details and booking information – even when they’re not on site. This has resulted in a time of growth and expansion whilst maintaining our high levels of customer service. We have been impressed by the support offered by Reztec during the extended testing and implementation and by the flexibility of the product to deal with our varied requirements. We also continue to benefit from the security and versatility of Reztec’s ongoing training and support."

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