— Sports Montréal

Founded in 1990, Sports Montréal is a non-profit organization offering a wide range of activities to their community. With everything from golf and aquatics to workout classes and day camps, Sports Montréal has it all.

Since 2009, Sports Montréal and its dozens of employees have used SmartRec to accomplish their daily administrative tasks. With over 15,000 annual users, the simple customer experience and user-friendly purchasing process make registrations a breeze.

Always ahead of the curve

Samuel Garant, Director of Operations at Sports Montréal, knows the SmartRec platform inside and out and has seen the evolvement of both Sports Montréal and Amilia over the past 10 years. So, why did they choose us and stick with us? It’s as simple as this: Amilia was and still is the best tool that filled a gap in the sports and activities world.

With the demand for physical activities and sports on the rise, Sports Montréal needed a software that would support its modern vision, rapid growth, and high-volume registrations. Asking clients to line up and register for activities in-person was no longer an option that suited their growth path. They wanted to be thought leaders in their industry and knew moving to an online platform was the way to get there.

Samuel made it very clear that Sports Montréal’s main goal is to always go above and beyond for their clients, and a user-friendly online registrations process was the perfect place to start. The organization wanted to remain a leader in the world of physical activity and sports in Quebec and moved to our online software in 2009. Samuel estimates that by his arrival in 2012, 95% of their clients were registering for activities online, whereas their competitors didn’t even offer an online platform at that time.

Taking it one step further

Over the years, Sports Montréal has learned to leverage our technology for more than simple online registrations; they tap into our open API to operate their website. Not familiar with these terms? It’s a fancy way of saying data is passed from one software to another. This gives Sports Montréal access to the data they need, which leads to useful business insights to continue to grow their business. This tech-savviness and innovative mindset are distinguishing factors that puts them ahead of the curve in the sports and activities world.

Another benefit of a modern online platform: the ability to process hundreds of registrations simultaneously.

With thousands of participants rushing to sign up for activities every year, Sports Montréal knows they can count on SmartRec to handle peak registration periods seamlessly. Take the graph below as an example: registration for an activity opened at noon, and over 700 users were able to successfully register for the activity within 30 minutes! Try doing that with in-person registrations!

Growing for and with our customers

“We were like partners at times. We would often share ideas or recommendations with Amilia” Samuel shares. With daily conversations with their participants, Sports Montréal was able to recognize their needs and help identify gaps in the platform. They shared this feedback with Amilia and worked together to find a solution.

This is how the collaborative relationships between Sports Montréal and Amilia began: recognizing client needs, identifying gaps in the platform, finding a solution, then working together to test out new features. A good example is how Sports Montréal noticed there was no easy way to offer drop-in activities. They presented this to Amilia, which drove us to further investigate drop-ins with our customers. We then worked to create something to meet overlapping needs, and Sports Montréal became involved in the development of the new drop-in feature in the platform.

These customer insights and concrete feedback were incredibly beneficial for us; we got the inside scoop of the needs of the market which led us to identify overlapping needs of Amilia clients. The two businesses have been learning and growing together over the last decade, which is why we can confidently say this has been a win-win collaboration.

It’s all about similar values

“Amilia helps us efficiently manage the registration and payment side of things, so that we can focus on the essentials”, mentioned Samuel. For Sports Montréal, the “essentials” means listening to their clients and making sports accessible to their community.

This parallel growth can be attributed to Sports Montréal and Amilia having similar goals and values. Leveraging technology to make things easier, making activities accessible, going above and beyond for clients, and encouraging active lifestyles are all core values the two organizations are proud to share.

When asked why this teamwork has been so successful, Samuel simply answered: “We share the same values and have similar goals in terms of growth. We’re scalable together.” He values the long-term collaboration we’ve fostered.

Get to know Sports Montréal

Sports Montréal is a non-profit organization with over 400 employees, 16,000 annual activity registrations, and offers more than 100 activities. They are a partner of the City of Montréal whose mission is to foster a passion for physical activity, from an early age, by creating positive, educational, and accessible sports experiences. In addition to offering a wide range of activities to Montréalers, Sports Montréal runs its own day camp and supports the resident sports clubs.

If you are interested to learn how SmartRec could help you and your organization succeed like it helped Sports Montréal, just reach out to our team. We would be happy to discuss it with you!