My opinion is that five fakups is not a sentence, and that digital transformation itself is a natural stage in the development of any business in any industry, and if your company wants to survive in the long term, it will have to go through it sooner or later. The only difference is that those who will do it now will collect all the cream, and those who will do it later, when we start to burn, will be in the team of those who catch up.
- And what, asks my friend, is it straight of any business?
- Yes, anyone, anyone, I answer.
"Ah, um ... even a public bath?"
It was difficult to refuse such a challenge. This article is the result of some thought.
So, the public bath.
The man decided to go to the bathhouse. He has a certain amount of money that he is ready to spend to wash and steam, and a certain image in his head that he wants to get for this money. For example, for one and a half thousand there should be a steam room, a small pool with cold water, unbroken sofas and a table. For 3000 he already wants beautiful tiles, separate tables for the company and a steam room with essential oils. For five - waiters and taps with draft beer, a spacious hall and several types of saunas. Etc.
If a bathhouse sets a price of 3000 for something that it doesn’t have, it doesn’t go there, because in another bathhouse it will get the same thing, but for one and a half thousand. Thus, the bathhouse cannot set the price at 3000, because it needs to make repairs for this. And she cannot make repairs, because we cannot put aside a lot for reconstruction from one and a half thousand, and it’s not very clear exactly where to beat in order to raise prices.
A vicious circle: you cannot improve the level of the bath to increase the cost, because the cost is low.
The first step towards sauna transformation (do you think it can be called E-sauna transformation or not?) Is to change your point of view. While we are playing on the market, conventionally, of consumer services, we are forced to live by the rules of this market. Because the services are the same. Maybe somewhere a little more pleasant, but somewhere less, but in general, the service of "washing in a bath" is the same.
You don't have to try to play in a collapsing market, you have to leave it. It is necessary to leave for the entertainment segment. It is easier to say “going to our bathhouse is entertainment” and ask for the entertainment two or three times more money. Because the service is the same everywhere, but the entertainment is different.
A person, going to a specific restaurant, does not buy a food service. Food is a dining room. A restaurant is a service of entertainment, interior design, food, wine, service, music. And a person will go to a specific restaurant, because there is good entertainment from his point of view, because in another restaurant he will, of course, be fed, he will remain full, but not as entertained as in this one.
Therefore, he pays money to this particular restaurant for a particular entertainment, and pays much more than dining rooms, often by an order of magnitude (500 rubles vs 5000-10000 rubles).
This is because restaurants do not play in the food market.
And the bathhouse, which has the goal of making good money, should not play in the market of household services for washing the population.
But now the average bath is not fun. Why? Because she's terribly unfriendly to newbies. In fact, she is also unfriendly to the old-timers, they just don't know about it. It is enough to show them that you can be better, and most of them will enthusiastically accept new ideas, because this is their main point - to increase the client's pleasure, bringing it to such a level that the very fact of washing in the bathhouse fades into the background.
So, what are the problems awaiting a newbie in the bath?
Should I go there with a broom? Will they give it? What to do with it? Should it be soaked? How much? And take a towel with you? Will they give you sneakers or do you need your own? And what kind of sneakers, normal plastic or cheap weeping ones? Why a sheet? Should I buy it? Should I leave a deposit in cash for it? What if I don't have cash? Can I take my phone with me? And it won't be stolen? Are the lockers locked? What to do with the key if you are naked? Where to go to the steam room? Should you be naked or in a sheet? Can I ask someone to beat you with a broom? And if the broom hurts a lot and everyone laughs at you? How to wash in a basin? And where to get the basin? And can they give out soap? What should you take with you to the bathhouse? Can you drink beer there, like in the movie? Do you need beer with you? Is it generally possible with you? Can they pour beer there? Sell snacks? And if they pour beer,then you can take this particular bottle with you? Can I go to the steam room after my beer? But what if it’s too hot or too cold in the steam room? How to add steam? How do you make it awesome? And to smell good in the bath? Can you order a massage? And how should you steam properly - first wash, and then go to the steam room, or vice versa? Is it possible to order food delivery? How to pick it up if you are naked? Is it possible with rings and chains? If not, is there a safe?if you are naked Is it possible with rings and chains? If not, is there a safe?if you are naked Is it possible with rings and chains? If not, is there a safe?
These and other questions await a person who has little experience of going to the bathhouse. The questions are terrible, and in 90% of cases he simply will not go there, although he can, wants and has the opportunity. Therefore, the first step is to make sure that these questions do not arise. Is it logical?
No. You and I have just made the classic mistake of improvers: we started changing the original data without bothering to fix the result of the changes. This is what separates digital transformation from ordinary service improvement.
The cornerstone of any transformation is analytics. Digital transformation is called not simply because we are changing accounting books to 1C, but because we are starting to work with such a volume of data that people could not work with before, and make management decisions based on this data. It would never have occurred to anyone to calculate summary statistics for all processes every day, because it is a lot of work. Today, if we translate all processes into digital, we get this calculation almost free of charge - for the cost of servers and for the salaries of developers, which are very modest amounts for such an object.
Any improvements, however expensive and cool, are useless or almost useless until you know what effect they give. It's like an anecdote about advertising: half of the advertising doesn't work, and half works. The problem is that no one knows which half it is.
And if advertising channels, with certain actions, lend themselves to measurement, and you can tell for which number of customers where they came from, then starting to measure inside, you will not be able to find out what effect they have, because the client is already inside, and regardless of these measurements will go away in a couple of hours. Whether he will come next time, you will not know, even if he really does come.
Therefore, transformation begins with measurements. It is vitally important for us to get a starting point, to turn monthly revenue of X million into more detailed figures: a schedule by days of the week, by time of day, on weekdays and weekends, the average check, the difference between the first and second category, see if more attendants go to one attendant than to another, what is the ratio of men and women, how many additional services are ordered, how much is spent on washing, how many sheets are stolen, what is the age ratio of clients, how many clients come with food and alcohol, how much time they spend in the bath on average, how much of this time they spend in the steam room, how they pay, what is the dependence of visiting the steam room on the temperature in it, and so on.
Anything that can be measured and that is potentially interesting must be measured.
Measurement is a lantern. The presence of a lantern does not mean that you will find a mountain of gold in the cave with it, but without a lantern, the probability of finding it is almost zero.
The lower the cost of measurements, the more they can be taken. Therefore, any measurements that can be automated must be automated. The first step is to switch to an order accounting system, if it does not already exist. The client comes - we fix which ticket he bought, how much he took. This system should not be a stand-alone unit, but a building block that transfers data to the central statistics system. If we run out of sheets / towels / slippers - we make the button "finished". Thus, we distinguish the situation "did not buy, because it is not necessary" from "did not buy, because it was not." If there is suddenly a bottleneck that steals part of your proceeds, we fix it. The second step is to put video analytics at the entrance and exit. Modern systems are good at detecting gender, age and tracking people by their faces. With two cameras we receive information about the composition of clients,about their age, about the time they spend inside, and we understand how many customers are returning.
In addition, we are introducing a customer loyalty system and starting to build a customer base. Instead of loyalty cards, you can give out beautiful bracelets, which will be a customer card and a locker key. We register clients by phone number, creating a reverse channel: it is useful for anything, from sending out promotions to working with negative reviews.
Such simple measures will already allow us to make and begin to test assumptions about the paying capacity of customers and start testing hypotheses.
Will the average bill increase the offer for an extra sheet? Maybe you should do it?
In general, what percentage of clients take them on? Maybe they should be included in the ticket price?
Does the average check depend on age? Is there a clear segmentation by age of customers depending on the ticket price?
Are there any gaps in attendance? Can they be straightened out with a discount for certain customer segments, relieving rush hour?
What is the difference between attendance on weekdays and on weekends, when tickets are more expensive? Can they be made even more expensive?
In general, will a large announcement in the lobby increase the attendance of “discounts up to 12 o'clock for pensioners”, or everyone already knows about discounts? If it does not increase, maybe it is worth placing such a banner on the street?
How will the sale of season tickets affect the average bill? What is the average utilization rate of a subscription? Do you buy the season pass again?
Do we have regular customer groups? When do they go? Could it be that they get in the way of newbies?
These are not even ideas, but just assumptions. With the help of statistics, these assumptions can be checked and verified much faster than half-yearly reports, within a month or two, moreover, several assumptions can be checked at once. Something can be checked in a week or even a couple of days. The faster you get feedback after you start testing, the faster you test your current guess and can test the next.
As a result, for example, after a month or two, you realize that the ideal set is a sheet and a towel, and include it in the ticket price, increasing the turnover. Because of the understandable and increased washing volumes, you conclude a more profitable contract with the laundry (less washing costs per sheet, more margin) and buy stronger sheets at the same price, which increases their service life (less depreciation costs).
Now is the time to start aiming at problems and understand whether it was a problem or not. Or there is still.
A small percentage of new customers, and the utilization of the bath is incomplete? Let's develop a design guide and use it to make friendly signs with explanations and navigation. The percentage has grown, but not enough yet? We go to The Village to write a guide to the baths. Oh, the percentage of new people has increased, but there are no returns?
We start working with reviews and interviews. We find an uninterested person and he starts calling customers: what you didn't like, tell us in more detail, here's a free voucher for this visit.
After collecting a sufficient number of reviews, we classify them into ten categories, and instead of calling, we can ask to fill out a questionnaire in exchange for a discount. We begin to see problems: here the rugs are torn, here the company is drunk, here are stupid taps in the shower.
These problems, if many people complain about them, are ready-made metrics to track. We add them to the questionnaire and regularly send it to a certain percentage of customers, controlling important factors.
All of these are not isolated shares. There is no point in counting the number of people once a month, and there is no point in interrogating some people there sometimes. A certain percentage of customers should always be interviewed. For fast changes, there must be fast statistics. Fast statistics means constant monitoring of factors. The person sending out the polls is failing? We are hiring a developer, let him make an automatic system of surveys and collecting results.
Another group of problems is bottlenecks. You can get a lot of traffic, but these people simply won't come with a queue to the steam room a second time. Lack of empty tables will have the same effect. These factors can be studied through customer surveys, or they can be studied by technical methods, by counting people entering and leaving in each room. This is even deeper analytics, compared to counting people at the exit, and it gives a vivid picture of what people are doing inside the bath: how much time they spend in the steam room, what time in the recreation area, how many people in different zones at different times, where the peak clock. Are people crowding in the locker room? We analyze why they do it. Few benches? Let's put on a couple more.
The point of digitalization is not that we notice a problem and start doing something about it. The meaning of digitalization is in transferring processes and statistics into digital, in obtaining a tool that allows you to observe the life of an object in real time and act on the basis of this observation.
Digitalization is a replacement for informal processes “Are the brooms over? for you 1000 rubles, go buy it on the market "for clearly formalized, understandable instructions. Because the informal process is a human factor. One person watches the brooms, the other does not. It is not necessary at all for a person to follow this, this is an extra burden on employees. Employees must solve complex rare issues that it makes no sense to drive into the framework of automatic processes and smile at customers.
Informal processes are destroyed for a reason, but first they are studied, they contain what is useful for business (statistics and tracking metrics help us in this), and on the basis of this formalized processes are created: service guides, job descriptions, checklists of those or other processes. This allows using the correct developments not only for their authors, but also for any other employees. By doing this, we reduce the value of one particular employee for the business. From a business point of view, an important process that rests on a specific employee is a very bad decision: you need to take care of it, you need to pay higher salaries, conflicts with other employees over salaries arise, plus the bus factor is in full glory.
Digitization is about keeping track of everything that can be tracked. Water consumption, electricity consumption, gas consumption, movement in premises, air quality, number of clean towels, number of purchased slippers, number of slippers left by customers, number of slippers by their size, time to return a towel to circulation, lifetime of a towel, cost of its replacement , etc.
The combination of these factors is a gold mine for identifying bottlenecks. Towel return time affects the required pool of towels, and its lifetime affects how often that pool is refreshed.
Tracking metrics is, if you will, tests of your system. Having metrics in real time, you can start to edit the processes, keeping your finger on the pulse and making sure that tomorrow your innovation will not scare all regular customers. Without metrics, you will discover this after three months of traffic decrease, but having data for each logged in - in a week, despite the fact that after a week the decrease in traffic will still be at the level of statistical error.
Once we have metrics and we've fixed the worst problems, it's time to start thinking about new ideas. Right now it makes sense to try to do something with unfriendliness for new customers: without this there is no point in launching serious promotions to attract new customers, too large a percentage will be eliminated, the cost of attracting customers will be too high.
You can test these changes, for example, by a parameter that determines the probability with which a client who came to the bath for the first time will return there for another month or six months, for example.
Have you learned how to attract and retain customers? It's time to go to the entertainment market.
The bathhouse is a good hipster place, the perfect place for integration with bloggers. For working people we make the function "while you are sitting in the bath, we will wash and iron your clothes", you can come straight in a work suit. For people with families, we make Father's Day and Mother's Day, let them come with children.
A joint project with a craft brewery will provide both drinks and a point of attraction: where else can you taste hundreds of different beers in a sauna? Do you need snacks for beer? Agreements with the nearest cafes and restaurants for fast delivery.
It is not clear what happened to the steam room? We make a clear schedule: every third steam room is hot, for the strong in spirit, on Thursday - every steam room with a new smell.
We are announcing a joint day for women and men, like in Finland, and we are enjoying the shit in the media, is it not a threat to scrapie?
Etc.
Money?
Let's now figure out in a basic way how much it will cost us. For fun, I went to the nearest bathhouse and counted the places there. I got (in the men's section) 60 lockers, 40 places at the tables and 15 in the steam room. Let's take for the maximum number of clients simultaneously in the bath - 50 pieces. The women's department will give the same amount. A total of 100 people. The session is three hours, the bath is open from 10 to 23, so there will be about 4 visits per day for 100 people, 400 in total. A ticket costs 1500 (we do not take into account the weekend extra charge and additional services), which means that the proceeds per day are fully utilized places and premises - 400 * 1500 = 600k, and 18m per month. With utilization 50% - 9m.
Let's say the bath area is 800 square meters. The average rental rate in that area is 30k / meter / year. 800 * 30k / 12 = 2m is the rent of the premises per month. 400 clients, the deposit for a towel is 100 rubles, which means that the cost of towels per month does not exceed one and a half million, this is assuming that all clients tear them every time they visit. This is unlikely to be the case, so you can limit the associated costs to a million per month. Payroll - well, 6 people per department, 12 total, plus five technical personnel, a total of 18 (probably less, but let it be). Let's take the salary at the average rate of medium-skilled personnel, for example, 80k / month. Do not forget to multiply by 1.4, taking into account taxes and deductions. 80k * 18 * 1.4 = 2m.
We do not take into account major repairs and modernization, as well as the cost of electricity / gas, water and sewage, as well as heating in the winter: I have no idea how much they amount.
It turns out: 9-2-1-2 = 4m monthly profit. Not the most profitable business, but more profitable than many startups.
Now, what can be done with little effort. For a year of work, it seems to me, it is possible to bring the cost of tickets to 3000-4000 without greatly increasing the other items of expenses: cosmetic repairs will be required, the payroll of employees will grow, but not much, the costs of related services will be slightly higher.
200 clients a day for 3000 rubles will give 18m. Minus 2m rent, minus a slightly increased payroll of 3m employees, minus two million (instead of one) for consumables. 18-2-3-2 = 11m instead of 4. More than three times growth. This does not include the transformation team, of course. But the team has worked and left, and the profit will remain at the same level with the correct organization of processes.
You can estimate how much the team and work will cost. Cameras are unlikely to cost more than 50k each, a server with storage - another 100, a couple of workstations - 100k each. Cashiers / bath attendants terminals - 5 pieces, 50k each. Passage sensors - even at 30k / piece, a dozen. 50 * 3 + 100 + 100 * 2 + 50 * 5 + 30 * 10 = 1m. This is CAPEX, at the very first stage. Something will need to be updated and purchased, but then, you can lay it down two more times, as much for a year.
OPEX - CDTO, one piece, 500k, two analysts 200k each, two developers 200k each, one universal soldier 150 each. (500 + 200 * 4 + 150) * 1.4 = 2m for payroll. Office - 100k. All sorts of little things, such as loyalty cards, souvenirs, brochures / plates - well, 100k with a month's supply. Advertising will be more expensive, but at first it is not needed, and then it will be financed partially from the profit, so let's take an average of 500k. 2 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.5 = 2.7m transformation costs per month.
Total costs (1 * 3) + (2.7 * 12) = 36m. We assume that in a year we reach the desired profit, and we earn extra (11-4) * 12 = 84m in a year. Payback of the project in the region of 3 months.
Looks real. Considering that we do not go beyond the boundaries of profit throughout the entire project, we do not need to take any loans, everything is purely at our own expense.
Outcome
The article, of course, is far from complete, as it represents a number of ideas, jotted up in haste by an amateur who has nothing to do with this business. If you approach the generation of ideas systematically, arrange a brainstorm in a good team, then you can come up with three times more, and get much more exhaust from them.
What kind of ideas these will be - in fact, it does not matter. The point of transformation is to implement ideas for a reason, with feedback. And translating processes into digital will provide this feedback, which will provide an effect for any company, even for one in which digital technologies are only a TV on the wall.
Until then ... Do you know the owner of a public bath?