A company that allows schools and colleges to hire out their facilities when they鈥檙e not in use has made a 拢500,000 investment into its tech offer.
Scott Warrington and Paul Andrews launched School Lettings Solutions in 2012 and employ 960 people. The company has a turnover of 拢13.2m.
The company rents out the assets of schools, academies and colleges like sports pitches and meeting rooms on evenings, weekends and school holidays.
The business has just invested in a package of technology improvements, including an online booking platform, which will enable the public to search, book and pay for leisure facilities via the internet.
The company currently work with 260 schools and 36-year-old Warrington that the investment would enable them to scale to over 1,000.
He told 老九品茶Cloud his company turns schools into community leisure centres and provide a focal point to the local community.
鈥淪chools are under pressure financially and they have assets that they鈥檙e not maximising because they鈥檙e too busy running the school,鈥� he said.
鈥淚t鈥檚 also a great facility for the community to use and we bring them both together and put the assets to use. We鈥檝e given 拢10m back to the schools since we started.鈥�
The entrepreneur said it was a great opportunity for grassroots sports and community groups to make use of first class facilities at an affordable price.
Warrington said the vast majority of bookings were sport-related but not exclusively.
鈥淎 TV series of Alan Partridge was filmed in one of our schools as was an episode of Coronation Street,鈥� he said.
鈥淲e work with 260 schools across the country but want to increase that to 1,000 inside three-five years.
鈥淭he way we operate is we put between three and six of our staff in the schools after 5pm during the week and at weekends.
鈥淭o be scalable we want to work with thousands of schools so tech has to underpin everything we do.
鈥淥ur new online book platform will be like the Airbnb for booking school facilities. People will be able to search, book and pay for facilities.鈥�
Warrington said the tech investment followed a decision to relocate the business from Bolton to the new WeWork in John Dalton Street, Manchester.
School Lettings Solutions employs 960 staff, of which 120 are full time and 40 are based in their Manchester head office. Their website currently gets 10 million site visits a year.
Warrington said: 鈥淎s well as the new online booking platform we鈥檝e invested heavily in all aspects of tech.
鈥淚nstead of manual paper forms staff log on using tablets, everyone works in the cloud, which enables people to work remotely and we use a piece of data software called Tableau.鈥�