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With the arrival of a new decade, it’s hard to wrap our minds around what the next 10 years may hold—and relating to technology, doubly so. The last 10 years saw the digital age take off with a force, and it’s unlikely that momentum will slow. All one has to do is look at <a href="https://1851franchise.com/as-we-head-into-2020-technology-will-continue-to-shape-consumers-interactions-with-brands-2711955#franbuzz">Amazon’s pervasiveness in our everyday lives</a> to understand the speed at which technology can evolve, making it critical for businesses and franchises of all shapes and sizes to adapt, or die.<a href="https://1851franchise.com/let-the-e-commerce-commence-how-online-shopping-has-contributed-to-the-collapse-of-physical-stores-2711704#franbuzz">Yet among the increasing number of shuttered storefronts</a> littering the streets of cities and towns across America, though, the fitness and wellness industry is thriving. It’s not just due to the health-consciousness among modern consumers either; it’s the direct result of this technology renaissance and the knowledge that has come with it, in which <a href="https://company.mindbodyonline.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=how-mindbody-leverages-data-to-understand-consumer-preferences-and-predict-industry-trends-2712178" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">MINDBODY</a> was born.&nbsp;As the technology partner for a growing faction of businesses and franchise brands within the health and fitness space, MINDBODY caters to the changing needs of these businesses and their customers, leveraging the data it collects across its multifaceted enterprise to anticipate and adapt to emerging trends in the name of better serving both.MINDBODY Chief Technology Officer <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilrajasekar?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=how-mindbody-leverages-data-to-understand-consumer-preferences-and-predict-industry-trends-2712178" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Sunil Rajasekar</a> has been with the tech platform for a little over a year, running product management, engineering and operations for the supplier. Prior to MINDBODY, Rajasekar’s background was split between large enterprises and small business, and included high-level product management and engineering roles at eBay, Lithium Technologies and Intuit, among others. Working in tech for multi-million-dollar companies all the way down to startups has helped Rajasekar develop a unique perspective into how technology can fuel growth for brands of all sizes, perspective that has become particularly applicable in the space in which his work currently resides.Before diving into all of the ways in which MINDBODY is changing the game for its partners through technology, it’s first important to understand the platform’s core functionalities. MINDBODY’s technology has two main audiences: consumers and the businesses that serve them. At its most basic, end-users interact with MINDBODY to schedule and book fitness classes or wellness appointments, but it also functions as a supplier platform that its partner brands can use to create the user interface consumers interact with. Whether a business is comprised of one yoga studio or a thousand, Rajasekar said, implementing technology that streamlines operations is a priority for MINDBODY’s partners.“You want to have your consumers schedule classes online or on a mobile device. You want to manage your staff. You need a CRM-type capability where you track your users and market to them. You want to send them emails and text messages with offers, or that remind them to come in,” he said. “Then, you need reporting to know how you're doing and where you should be focusing. You need to process payments. And you want to give the people who run your studios the tools to run the business using a mobile app.”Taking it one step further, MINDBODY also gives its partners access to its <a href="https://www.mindbodyonline.com/fitmetrix-fitness-tracking-software?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=how-mindbody-leverages-data-to-understand-consumer-preferences-and-predict-industry-trends-2712178" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">FitMetrix fitness tracking software</a> via wearable devices used for the duration of a class or workout. Consumers are able to track their vitals and see how they’re comparing to others on a leaderboard, which not only adds to a business’ value proposition, but also gives them access to data to further improve their offering.&nbsp;“Think of it almost like we are an [enterprise resource planning] system,” Rajasekar said. “It’s everything you need to run a business in these segments.”&nbsp;And that's just one aspect of what MINDBODY’s platform does. The other is its consumer app that helps end-users discover these services. “We complete the loop,” Rajasekar explained, a phrase he kept coming back to as a means of conveying MINDBODY’s philosophy. “We help businesses run their business, but we also help them get new consumers or clients, which everyone consistently says is their number one need.”Such is the reason why MINDBODY supplemented its offering with its consumer app—it gives consumers a place to go to discover fitness and wellness services, look at ratings and reviews, and book those services instantly, helping fuel the overall ecosystem of the fitness and wellness industry.And as that industry has evolved in the last two decades, so too has MINDBODY. According to Rajasekar, completing the loop has come to mean something much more than it did even a year ago.“MINDBODY has grown with the boutique fitness industry and, in many ways, has enabled the boom,” Rajasekar said. “The company has been around for almost 20 years. It was started when our founder [Rick Stollmeyer] realized that these smaller yoga studios that were starting to pop up needed software that they could use to run their business. It started out focusing on these smaller businesses, and what has happened is that as the boutique fitness industry has flourished, and a lot of those businesses that started off as one location now have hundreds or thousands.”&nbsp;By working closely with those businesses to understand their rapidly changing needs—more sophisticated payment requirements, attracting new consumers, developing stronger marketing practices, creating compelling websites, what have you—MINDBODY's capabilities gave grown exponentially. Describing the platform as “inherently customizable,” Rajasekar said MINDBODY allows brands the freedom to tailor anything from the basics, like branding or look and feel, to the more sophisticated, like marketing emails, down to the text, display and timing and frequency of deployment.Adding to the platform’s versatility, Rajasekar explained, is MINDBODY’s open API platform that allows its partners to create their own branded mobile app or another internal application, a strategy more and more brands are adopting. This has resulted in a “very vibrant third-party ecosystem” with thousands of partners that have used MINDBODY’s API to custom-build other solutions that live outside of the platform while still leveraging the same data.&nbsp;It is in this arena of data and analytics where MINDBODY really separates itself. On top of FitMetrix’s biometric data collection, the entire MINDBODY ecosystem on the business side of the platform is collecting valuable consumer data that allows it to reliably interpret consumer preferences in real-time and <a href="https://1851franchise.com/how-to-successfully-market-to-the-tech-savvy-and-experience-driven-gen-z-demographic-by-understanding-what-they-want-2711860#most-recent">leverage that information into viable solutions</a> for its partner businesses.&nbsp;&nbsp;“Consumers are getting used to the Uber and Lyft experience where everything is on-demand and highly personalized, so we need to think about how the rising consumer expectations we're seeing in other industries apply to fitness and wellness, what we are doing and what our customers are doing,” Rajasekar said, noting the increasing popularity of <a href="https://1851franchise.com/how-peloton-shook-up-the-health-and-fitness-industry-in-2019-2711667#most-recent">flexible, at-home workout options that go beyond just the facility</a>.“If you think about Amazon, it’s a blended online and retail experience—that's one big trend that's happening in fitness,” he continued. “We are working with partners to enable that and we have customers already doing it. You can use our platform to create your own video content, upload it and then serve it to your customers, even creating a tiered membership with that digital library. It's still early, but this is one area I feel more and more of our customers are going to be providing this blended digital and in-store experience.”Another big area in which MINDBODY excels is leveraging all of the data it has collected to give both its customers and consumers a better-customized experience.“For our consumers, we give them some recommendations, but these are only going to get deeper and more sophisticated,” Rajasekar said. “Imagine a world where you go into our app and tell it, here’s what I’m looking for—I’m 20-something years old, I want more endurance, I want to get more muscular, whatever it may be—and then with all of the consumer data our system has, we are able to deliver a recommendation based on those goals. These are the classes you should be looking at. These are the times of the day you should be taking these classes. Here are the classes are available right next to where you are. Do you want us to go ahead and book it? It makes it instantaneous.”Rajasekar wasn’t done, either. Using the example of a standalone yoga studio, he explained that on the business side of the equation, MINDBODY’s catalog of consumer data collected over its 20 years of existence can be used to help its partners optimize their offering in accordance with demand. MINDBODY helps them identify gaps—for instance, a yoga studio that isn’t offering a hot yoga class in a ZIP where consumers are searching for it—and makes analytics-backed recommendations on when to hold the class as well as how much to charge for it to best meet said demand.“On the business side, it's equally interesting,” he said. “We know what works and what doesn't. Because we close the loop, we have visibility into what consumers are doing so we can come and tell [a business] what people in their ZIP are searching for. … This is why the loop is so interesting—we can go back to those people who searched and couldn't find the class and tell them that now there’s a studio offering what you were searching for nearby. Do you want to book it? And it’s one click.”Technology is only getting smarter, and the brands that find a way to leverage it most effectively are the ones best positioned to drive trends, not follow them. Why MINDBODY is such a valued partner to businesses, franchised or otherwise, in the fitness and wellness industry is due to its versatility; its presence in multiple silos within the same space through its consumer app, business platform and third-party ecosystem gives its partners access to the very information capable of transforming their businesses. In an industry sector where success hinges primarily on the ability to deliver a top-tier consumer experience, what could be more urgent?

How MINDBODY Leverages Data to Understand Consumer Preferences and Predict Industry Trends

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