Managing a multi-location academy may sound like a dream come true, but the reality is often much more complicated. The studio growth that comes with opening multiple locations often brings a heap of challenges: miscommunication, inconsistencies in the student experience, tracking progress across sites, and so much more. Running multiple locations requires a balance of strategy, smart operational choices, and strong leadership. Let’s dive into the hidden challenges of multi-location academy management, and explore real-world strategies to solve them.

1. The Trouble with Student Experience: Maintaining Consistency Across Locations

With multiple locations, ensuring every student receives the same high-quality experience can be tricky. As you expand, you may notice small variations—different teaching methods, inconsistent class structures, or even a lack of standardized communication—leading to a disjointed student experience.

What needs to be solved:

• Standardization vs. personalization: While you want your locations to have a personal touch, it’s crucial to standardize key elements such as class structure, communication style, and feedback mechanisms to maintain consistency.
• Quality control: As you grow, you must ensure that the same level of instructional quality and student support exists at each location.

Real-Life Solution:

• Create a manual or playbook for all locations that defines standards for class delivery, communication, and student interaction. This guide should be the backbone of your operations, ensuring that no matter where a student goes, they can expect the same high-level experience.
• Regular training and development for instructors is crucial. Hold quarterly meetings to review teaching practices and gather feedback to ensure everyone is on the same page.
• Implement a feedback loop: After every class, encourage feedback from both students and instructors. This will help identify areas of improvement before they escalate into bigger issues.

2. Communication Breakdown: Keeping It Flowing Across Multiple Locations

As your academy grows, communication becomes fragmented. Information about student progress, class schedules, or even simple day-to-day updates can easily get lost between locations. The last thing you want is for your staff to operate in silos, unaware of changes happening at other locations.

What needs to be solved:

• Centralized communication: When dealing with multiple locations, you need a centralized communication strategy to ensure smooth information flow.
• Coordination between teams: Without seamless communication, your staff may inadvertently be duplicating work or, worse, missing critical updates about student needs, class schedules, or facility requirements.

Real-Life Solution:

• Weekly or bi-weekly team check-ins: Hold a virtual or in-person meeting with all managers and instructors across locations. During these meetings, discuss any challenges, upcoming changes, or student concerns.
• Establish clear communication channels: Create a central communication platform where all team members can post updates and share information in real-time. This could be something simple like a dedicated Slack channel or a shared Google Drive folder.
• Empower a lead manager at each location: Ensure each location has someone in charge of disseminating key information back to the central team. This role acts as a bridge between locations, ensuring smooth communication.

A club management system like Exoclass can eliminate these communication breakdowns by automating key interactions. Through automated emails, invoices, reminders, and registration confirmations, Exoclass ensures that your clients receive timely and consistent updates.

Whether it’s sending reminders for upcoming classes, invoices for payments, or confirmations for new registrations, automation reduces manual workload and minimizes errors. This helps keep both staff and clients in the loop with minimal effort, ensuring that communication is seamless across all locations.

Explore how Exoclass handles automated client communication here and see how it can transform your multi-location operations!

3. Tracking Studio Growth: The Complexity of Managing Expansion

The Challenge:
As your academy expands, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of student progress, financials, and the overall growth across locations. Without proper tracking, you could miss key indicators that help guide future decisions, such as the performance of specific classes, teacher effectiveness, or student retention rates.

What needs to be solved:

• Tracking performance across locations: Understanding how each location is performing—financially and in terms of student success—is critical.
• Sustaining quality during growth: How do you continue to grow while maintaining the high standards that your academy is known for?

Real-Life Solution:

• Set up a monthly reporting system: Have each location submit monthly performance reports, including class attendance, student feedback, and any financial data. Use these reports to track patterns and trends in each location.

• Delegate accountability: Appoint someone at each location to take ownership of student progress tracking. This individual will be responsible for collecting data and flagging issues early on.
• Focus on retention: Keep track of student retention rates—if students are not returning after a few months, figure out why. Are they not progressing as expected? Are they dissatisfied with class times? Understanding why students leave will help you improve your offerings across all locations.

4. Operational Efficiency: Automating to Reduce Overhead

The Challenge:
As you add locations, you’re likely taking on a lot more administrative work: scheduling, billing, attendance tracking, and more. Managing all these tasks manually at every location can lead to human error, inefficiencies, and burnout.

What needs to be solved:

• Reducing administrative burden: You need to automate as many processes as possible so that your staff can focus on student interaction and growth rather than paperwork.
• Efficiency in class scheduling and payment systems: With multiple locations, it’s easy for scheduling conflictsand payment errors to occur. These can lead to confusion for both staff and students.

Real-Life Solution:

• Automate routine tasks: Automate class scheduling to prevent overlap and reduce the manual effort involved in organizing classes at multiple locations. Use a class scheduling system that integrates with payment and membership management tools to ensure smooth operations across all sites.
• Centralized billing and payment systems: Implement a centralized membership management with multi-location capabilities to manage payments and memberships across all locations. This can automate billing processes, track payments, and send reminders, saving you valuable time and reducing errors.

Monika Kvietkutė-Greimienė, founder of the Baby & Kids Gymnastics School, faced similar challenges as her academy grew from 200 active students to 400 students in less than a year. Monika was managing all operations manually at first, from class schedules to billing, which was quickly becoming unmanageable.

Once she implemented Exoclass, the class scheduling system and centralized membership management with multi-location capabilities automated her processes, cutting down administrative time significantly. Now, Monika spends just three hours a week on admin tasks, allowing her to focus more on student growth and studio expansion, while Exoclass handles the operational heavy lifting. Read a full story here.

5. Tips for Academy Owners to Successfully Scale with Multiple Locations

• Don’t skip on standardization: Standardizing key processes like teaching methods, customer service, and student tracking across all locations is crucial for consistent student experience.
• Delegate responsibility: Entrust managers at each location with specific operational responsibilities. Empower them to make decisions locally while following the standardized processes you’ve established.
• Track your growth meticulously: Collect data on attendance, student progress, and financial performance across all locations. Use this data to make informed decisions about how and when to expand.
• Use the right tools: Invest in systems that automate scheduling, membership management, and reporting across all locations. The right tools will free up your time and give you greater control over operations.

Conclusion: Solving the Complexities of Multi-Location Academy Management

A multi-location academy management is no easy task, but by focusing on the right processes, communication channels, and tools, you can overcome the hidden challenges that often arise. From ensuring a consistent student experience to tracking studio growth effectively, the key is to implement systems and strategies that help streamline operations and reduce manual workload. The solutions are within reach—you just need to start tackling these challenges head-on with practical strategies and the right support in place.

If you’re ready to take control of your multi-location club management and scale your academy efficiently, consider adopting tools that simplify class scheduling, improve communication, and automate membership management. By working smarter, not harder, you can ensure your academy grows without losing its soul.

Ready to streamline your multi-location academy management? Schedule a demo today and see how Exoclass can help your academy grow!