Tracking the Performance of Products, Locations, and Sales Agents from One Place: Lessons from Geronimo

This week, we’re putting the spotlight on Skydive Geronimo, a company that offers the best beach skydives in Australia. 

Founded in 2010 by husband and wife Glenn and Amy Stutt, Skydive Geronimo offers a unique tandem skydive experience, encouraging travellers to “release their inner brave” and create a lasting memory of Western Australia.

We recently caught up with Amy and asked her about what attracts customers to Skydive Geronimo, and how they stay on top of their operations. 

Check out what she has to say!

Offering a bucket list experience

While there are several skydiving sites in Australia, guests flock to Skydive Geronimo because of the breathtaking views and the unparalleled experience that the crew offers. 

“With its proximity to Perth city, unique and friendly wildlife, turquoise waters, and pristine beaches, skydiving on Rottnest Island with Geronimo has now become a must do item on many travellers’ bucket lists,” says Amy.

The business also has an impeccable safety record and a highly experienced team. “Our jump crew, pilots, ground crew and customer service team are all hand selected based on their commitment to safety and customer service,” she adds.

And unlike other establishments, Skydive Geronimo strives to provide unique packages and experiences to guests. 

“Since we offer a boutique-style product, our team can engage more with customers and offer a personalized and unique skydiving experience to everyone,” remarks Amy. 

“Be it booking ferry tickets for a day or overnight trip to the island, planning a skydive to celebrate a milestone birthday, proposing to your partner or even getting married right on the beach after you land (yes, we have done that too!) — no special request is too much for our crew that goes above and beyond to make your experience unforgettable.”

She continues, “We also boast the best skydive cinematography packages worldwide — using the latest camera models available and professionally editing videos in house so that customers get an exciting and engaging video, where they are the star of their own extreme sports movie.” 

“Our commitment to making sure that you have the safest and most fun skydiving experience possible keeps even those who were afraid of heights coming back for more!”

How Skydive Geronimo keeps the business running smoothly across different locations

According to Amy, while the company’s skydive operations are based on Rottnest Island, their admin office is in Jandakot, Perth.

“Skydive staff depart daily for Rottnest Island by plane, while a small team of sales and accounting staff handle customer and agent enquiries and bookkeeping roles from the mainland base. Customers can visit the administrative office to make bookings, purchase gift vouchers or merchandise whilst all invoicing relating to the skydives take place at our outlet on Rottnest Island,” she explains. 

Since they operate across two locations, team members need the ability to share and access information from both the admin office and the field. Prior to Vend, they had trouble doing this, and resorted to sharing data manually. 

When they switched to Vend, they were able to access real-time data in the cloud and streamline their operations. 

“Vend’s cloud server-based infrastructure has now enabled us to access this information remotely, helping us track our merchandise stock levels on the island at any time and adjust invoices (assisting customers with refunds if needed) from our administrative office without having the need to fly to Rottnest Island,” says Amy.

Vend has also made it easier to manage pricing updates amidst seasonal changes and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Skydive Geronimo has seasonal rates change mid-year, and the ability to update products and prices from a remote location has helped us transition between the seasons with ease. This has also been most helpful post COVID-19 when management have been able to access information from Vend remotely while working from home.”

Using robust reporting to stay on top of multiple moving parts

The team at Skydive Geronimo tracks a variety of things in the business, including product performance and sales. 

Thanks to Vend, staying on top of everything is a breeze for the crew.

Amy says, “Being a business that works with over 200 third party agents, Vend helps us keep track of our highest performing booking agents. We love the fact that we can track our most popular products (that include media packages and merchandise that are not captured in our reservation system as they are often sold last minute on the day of the skydive), using quick filters and ‘tags’ that make the reporting process so much easier.”

In addition, the team likes to track where customers are coming from, and they can do this using Vend’s customer management tools. 

“We always add the customer country of origin to the ‘contacts’ at the point of sale so that we can track our major customer markets through reports. This data helps management make informed pricing, market entry and other strategic decisions.”  

Integrating point of sale and accounting

In terms of integrations, Skydive Geronimo uses Vend and Xero, and this has allowed the team to stay on top of all the business’ finances. 

As Amy puts it, “Details on payments, cash movements and costs of merchandise sold flow seamlessly between the two systems.”

Customer data is also synced between the two platforms, and this has eliminated hours and headaches from having to do manual data entry. 

“All customer ‘contacts’ that our crew create on Vend at the point of sale are automatically created and updated on Xero as well for easy bookkeeping, ” says Amy. 

“We have saved hours of staff time through this, by not having to duplicate invoices in an accounting system- and eliminating errors of manual data entry.”