School of Rock was outgrowing its mobile business strategy.
The iconic music school franchise is now operating in seven countries. There are 130 schools on the planet working under the School of Rock name. The company is a big user of mobile in its business back end and front end.
But recently, the effort being put into that mobile strategy was becoming more trouble than it was worth. In a recent interview with Small Business Trends, School of Rock CEO Chris Catalano explained his company’s problem as the company looked to scale for growth.
“School of Rock was using multiple apps for a single solution. They didn’t translate to the mobile world. They were clunky,” Catalano says. School of rock was using one app for a calendar, one app for scheduling, and another for invoicing. More apps became more work and with more locations being added at School of Rock the potential for problems could multiply.
The company searched for a solution for close to a year until it found the startup company Front Desk.
Front Desk is a cloud software platform that’s designed to be an office management tool. It can be used with an iPad or iPhone, as well as a website.
Front Desk has two parts to it: a staff app and a client app.
- With Front Desk’s staff app, a business can perform scheduling, track attendance, manage payroll and get business reports. The reports offer real-time intelligence.
- Front Desk’s Client Kiosk allows School of Rock’s clients to sign in and serve themselves for certain administrative activities. Clients can complete online registration, sign waivers and documents, and receive mobile notifications. The school’s students can make payments and review bills and invoices from the Client Kiosk.
School of Rock ran a pilot test using Front Desk for its locations in Seattle and Bellevue, Washington. Not only has School of Rock begun using Front Desk for its business needs, the school also contributed to the company’s first round of capital fundraising.
School of Rock’s Catalano calls Front Desk “intuitive, clean and simple” and says it is “competitively” priced. The school will gradually introduce Front Desk at all its locations over the next year. He said that Front Desk “simplifies things dramatically” and helps the company with things like lead management, billing and scheduling through a built-in calendar app.
In an interview with Small Business Trends, Front Desk Co-Founder and CEO Jon Zimmerman added that small businesses experiencing growing pains or lacking a cohesive mobile business strategy are right for his SaaS (software as a service) platform. “As these businesses build up, the administrative duties build up. With Front Desk small business owners can punch above their body weight.”
Zimmerman adds that Front Desk works to enhance not only a business’ administrative and office management experience, but also is geared toward making your customers feel more valuable. He adds that Front Desk is customizable to feature any business branding and logos.
Images: Front Desk, School of Rock
