Name:  Paul M.G. Astbury

Club:  Ocean Reef Club

Description:  Emailed New Member Alerts allow staff to become familiar with new member families by providing their photos along with information about their backgrounds and interests.  The alerts have generated a sense of familiarity that helps new members to feel at home in their first months of membership, as well as a feeling of confidence in associates initiating their first interactions with the new members.

Implementation:  Facilitated introductions begin with an emailed New Member Alert to staff with photos and a bit of background about the new members.  Individual staff members know to be on the lookout for the new members and now have some conversation points – city of residence, number of children, recreational interests, etc.- with which to personalize their welcome.  The new members are impressed with the staff’s attention and the warmth of their welcome.

Name:  Yvan Lampron

Club:  The Country Club of Virginia

Description:  Online Member Feedback – We created an online comment form for the members based on the comment cards available in our restaurants.  The members can address concerns or compliment staff service, restaurant food, and facilities on the website. 

Name:  Philip R. Kiester

Club:  Farmington Country Club

Description:  Farmington’s accounting staff created a detailed Excel report which provides all departments with feedback regarding disputed member charges.  Disputes are logged into the report and sent to the appropriated manager.  It features scanned images of the charges with accompanying research.  A summary of all inquiries is emailed monthly.  Managers can use this information to enhance training, thereby reducing the number of billing errors.

Implementation:  Maintained by membership accounting, the point of sale report keeps departments informed and in constant communication.  As a result, no inquiry is lost and members receive a prompt and accurate response.  Since its conception, the members have expressed a new confidence in the Club’s accounting.  Farmington staff are able to come together to provide premier member service.

Name:  Ross P. Day

Club:  The Kansas City Country Club

Description:  In prior years managers were recording the evening report as a journal entry.  This year the managers of the front of the house came up with the idea of emailing the evening report to all the people involved in the Food and Beverage operations.  This is a much better way of immediately communicating to all the managers at once a detailed report of operations. 

Implementation: We needed a more efficient way to communicate with all food and beverage managers.  The MOD takes a few minutes after their shift to email a quick report to other managers.  It is a very quick and efficient method of communication.  This has been well received from the management team in the sense of keeping everyone together and communicating on various issues that come up throughout the report.  Most of the time it provides multiple responses to the original email in regards to things that need to be fixed or addressed the next day.

Name:  Tommy Janney

Club:  The Country Club of Virginia

Description:  Frame It – We installed wood molding on hallway walls to support framed portraits of all past presidents.  This allows frames to be moved easily as more are added.

Name:  Randy Ruder, CCM

Club:  Beach Point Club

Description:  Often times you find yourself short of an electrical outlet and end up taping extension cords to the floor.  The Powerpack 1500 alleviates the need to run extension cords as you now can have a portable power system that supplies up to 1500 watts of electricity, enough to run almost any electronic product or appliance you might have.

Implementation:  The membership does not know the idea was implemented, but benefit from the improved appearance.

Name:  Angela H. Stewart

Club:  The Country Club of Virginia

Description:  Flexible Keyboards – Snack bars are a challenge to keep clean.  One especially difficult area is the point of sale equipment.  Flexible keyboards are sealed, allowing them to be cleaned with water and a towel or by dipping the keyboard into water.

Name:  Angela H. Stewart

Club:  The Country Club of Virginia

Description:  SharePoint Services – This document management service has been installed for the club to better manage photos.  Many photos are taken for the website, presentations, and other uses.  Finding a particular photo can be difficult.  With SharePoint, photos are named appropriately, stored in folders with like photos, and have keywords assigned.  Employees can locate specific photos by browsing or by searching on keywords. 

Name:  J. Brent Tartamella

Club:  The Westmoor Club

Description:  Through the utilization of the linked spreadsheets, we have increased efficiency and communications with regard to banquet events.  The forms are extremely versatile, and the layout is both easy to fill in as well as easy to understand.  The format prevents overbooking, and conveys all pertinent information for every event occurring each day at the club.  Also, because we already utilize Microsoft Excel, there was no additional cost associated with the implementation of the system.

Implementation:  The response to the efficiency and organization has been very positive.  Information is shard between staff and guests in the same format so that there are no questions about what needs to be done and what expectations there may be.

Name:  Stephen M. Downes

Club:  The Carnegie Abbey Club

Description:  The online job request has streamlined operations, ensuring we follow up and through on all jobs and receive appropriate re-billed income.  It has helped our Maintenance Engineer manage his time more efficiently.

Implementation:  Members love the ease of sue, the two way communication and the assurance that their requests have been acknowledged and followed up on.

Name:  Stephen M. Wilson

Club:  The Los Angeles Country Club

Description:  Last summer, the Club purchased a high-quality plotter printer, primarily for use in the Golf Shop as the source to print large-scale tournament posting sheets.  But this large-size printer is so versatile, we have used it for much, much more than it was ever intended.  We now create professional-looking large size posters for any number of events as promotional pieces for Club parties, Golf Shop sales, tournament sign-up posters, employee health and safety notices and more.  It’s been used to blow up archival club photographs and, during special Club celebrations; we used the printer to create banners that were 10 feet tall and 3 feet wide!  The amazing quality and clarity of the print achieved on this printer has even allowed us to use it to create our Idea Fair posters for this year’s competition!

Implementation:  Members and employees are quite impressed with the quality posters that we can now produce in-house.  In addition to saving us a tremendous amount of money versus standard poster printing rates at local print shops, we can generate posters quickly and efficiently all in-house.  Within hours of finishing a tournament, for example, we can print full-size posters with pictures of all the winners in bright, vivid colors.

Name:  Philip R. Kiester

Club:  Farmington Country Club

Description:  Farmington’s Banquet Service department standardized food stations by creating a set of buffet set-up diagrams.  The laminated diagrams are durable, easy to use and inexpensive.  The buffet diagrams have assisted in staff training banquet staff to properly set buffets.

Implementation:  A template of each station was drawn using Microsoft PhotoDraw, a program already available with Microsoft Office.  Included on each template is a list of the elements of that station.  The diagrams are laminated and posted on the Banquet set-up bulletin board.  Properly set buffets allow for elegant food presentation.  Members continue to appreciate the club’s food and its displays.

Name:  Yvan Lampron

Club:  The Country Club of Virginia

Description:  Interactive Email – we compiled tennis drills and program ideas online with staff and other area professionals.  This was a fun way to brainstorm and share coaching and instruction ideas through email.

Name:  Tommy Janney

Club:  The Country Club of Virginia

Description:  Cook Out – we converted gas stoves to portable stoves to use at parties during power outages.  We keep the club open by being able to cook food and serve the members. 

Name:  William C. Harris

Club:  The Country Club of Virginia

Description:  Bird’s-Eye View – we used the club’s bucket truck to photograph each hole on all three golf courses for our website.  Members and guests can view each photo from a perspective that provides more visual information that a ground-level photo.  The photos were also used for tree inventories for the Grounds department as well as artist renderings to be include in the club’s centennial book.

Name:  Angela H. Stewart

Club:  The Country Club of Virginia

Description:  Weekly E-Tips – Sharing information on software doe not need to wait for a training class.  Email can be used to share one tip at a time – in a weekly or biweekly time frame.  All sorts of information can be shared in this fashion-email tips, file storage, helpful websites, or information on spyware.  Just keep the messages as concise as possible.