Industry: Leisure and tourism
Location: Norfolk
ABOUT
Blue Sky Leisure is a successful family company with a long track record of delivering a high-quality service to its customers. The registered name of the company is Timewell Properties Limited; the company operates under the premier brand of Blue Sky Leisure with divisional trading businesses of Blue Sky Homes, Kelling Heath and Woodhill Park.
The company has always shown a strong commitment to its people and strives to offer the best service to its customers by ensuring that staff members are well trained and motivated.
The past few years have been both successful and challenging and has seen the company building on its strengths and key strategy of passionate people delivering passionate service. Its commitment to the environment has been recognised by the many awards and accreditations it has achieved.
CLIENT STORY
We worked with Blue Sky Leisure to build a custom application for their reopening amidst a global pandemic. Read all about it below.
From concept through to implementation of the App, Breakwater IT were superb. Nothing was too much trouble and the application works simply on our gatehouse allowing us to record movements of our Holiday Homeowners, Guests, Staff, Contractors, Deliveries and Visitors providing secure data storage for not only test and trace purposes but for health & safety and our personnel records. Having not used Power Apps previously we were unsure how it would perform but when combined with Power Bi it provides a wealth of management data allowing the business to operate safely and securely.
Challenge
Go back to June 2020; the UK has been in lockdown for three months. The UK Prime Minister announces that many sectors, including some leisure and tourism, will reopen on 4th July. Whilst a sense of relief came over many, there were also challenges arising. Particularly for Blue Sky Leisure, who own holiday parks including Woodhill Park and Kelling Heath.
With such large sites under their management, Blue Sky needed a way to track their owners, staff, contractors, deliveries, and day visitors. In the case of an outbreak of COVID-19 onsite, they also needed to be able to track visitors historically and pull reports.
Solution
Blue Sky Leisure needed a simple system that allowed them to track those onsite at Kelling Heath and Woodhill Park. In addition, a historical log was needed to monitor when visitors were coming and going. To resolve this, we built Blue Sky Leisure a custom application using Microsoft Power Apps.
Power Apps enables the creation of apps that can run on the web, iOS and Android, and can sit within Microsoft Teams. It is also included with Microsoft 365 subscriptions.
The app was built for mobile to give staff mobility when using the app. The app allows all visitors to check in on arrival, and out when leaving. On the home screen, the total number of people on site is displayed. As well as how many units are occupied.
Visitors will be asked to complete different information depending on the reason for visiting, e.g. owner or delivery. All visitors must confirm if anyone in their household is showing COVID-19 symptoms. The date and time of arrival will automatically populate. When leaving either site, visitors must check out as they leave. The departure date and time is once again automatically completed. There is also a timer to show how long the person spent onsite.
In the backend of the app, administrators of Blue Sky Leisure can view how many people are onsite. As well as who they are and their details. We have linked the app with Power BI which means they can report on the app at any time. The reason for this is to store a full audit trail of visitors. If they ever had a visitor onsite who showed symptoms or contracted COVID-19, they can filter to find those who were onsite at the same time. They would then be able to contact those people.
Result
Following the development of the app ahead of reopening in July, Blue Sky Leisure have been able to track and monitor visitors to their sites. This supports them in keeping their visitors and sites safe. Allowing them to quickly alert those if an outbreak occurred through reporting. We continue to work with Blue Sky to develop the app. Adapting to any changes in line with UK Government guidance.
