The Gym Group and Ensono Collaborate to Transform the Digital Experience

Cloud-native e-commerce platform delivers a reliable and accessible digital experience for The Gym Group’s members.

DOWNERS GROVE – October 17, 2023 – Ensono, expert technology advisor, innovation partner and managed service provider, and The Gym Group, a leading low-cost gym company with over 230 gyms across the UK, developed a state-of-the-art e-commerce platform to run on Microsoft Azure to elevate The Gym Group’s digital experience for current and future members.

The Gym Group operates a contactless customer experience, and outside of the gym, customer interaction with a member of The Gym Group’s team will almost always be through digital channels. Therefore reliability and availability are prioritized in its technology infrastructure. This has already demonstrated its value as during a peak demand period of January and February 2023, The Gym Group saw its best app availability on record at 99.99%.

“Whilst at first glance it might appear we’re only a gym business, you quickly realize that we’re a tech-enabled business as well,” said Jim Hingston, Digital Product Director at The Gym Group. “Ensono helped us to not only fix the engine of our business but improve our integration too, building a strong and lasting foundation, allowing us to scale into the future.”

As well as directly improving site speed and functionality, The Gym Group wanted to build a new technology platform to meet the demands of its future growth. Ensono evolved The Gym Group’s tech stack to a microservices model, giving it a composable architecture that can easily slot in new best-of-breed technologies. This enhanced business agility enabled The Gym Group to roll out new features quickly and effectively to members. Following the launch of the new platform, The Gym Group was able to offer online classes from its partner Fiit for its premium members in just five weeks.

Ensono designed and built an SEO-optimized, user-friendly public-facing sales site and membership area that consistently delivers high performance and can easily handle peak traffic periods. Through employing a Single Sign On (SSO) between the legacy site, mobile app, e-commerce site, and members area, Ensono was able to prioritize a seamless and personalized member experience. This was critical in streamlining the joining process, cutting down on potential customers not going through with a purchase, and ultimately increasing the number of new members. The new technology infrastructure contributed to a 100 – 150 bps conversion improvement*, driven by the new experience and increased stability.

“Ensono was our partner of choice, we knew they had the engineering and e-commerce credentials, as well as an understanding of our business and priorities. We’re really proud of the delivery of this critical business project and the results it is delivering,” added Hingston.

“It’s been brilliant working with The Gym Group to construct their tech stack, but the real joy has been seeing the results,” said Steve Marshall, Engagement Director at Ensono. “In the 24/7 fitness industry, reliability is everything, and we know that every digital interaction with The Gym Group’s members must be seamless. The Gym Group can now rapidly launch new member experiences and offer a reliable and efficient service for current and future customers.”

About Ensono

Ensono is an expert technology advisor, innovation partner and managed service provider. As a relentless ally, we specialize in helping enterprise clients transform their organization, innovate new and disruptive technologies and optimize their IT operations to achieve better business outcomes. Our dedicated team works across hybrid environments with services that span consulting, mainframe and application modernization, public cloud migration and cloud-native development. With certified experts in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, and recognized as Microsoft Datacenter Transformation Partner of the Year, Ensono has over 3,000 associates globally and is headquartered in greater Chicago.

About The Gym Group

The Gym Group was a pioneer of the low-cost gym model and now operates over 230 high quality sites across the UK. These gyms offer 24/7 opening and flexible, no-contract membership. As of 30 June 2023 there were 867,000 members nationwide. The gyms have over 53 million visits per annum, score highly on member satisfaction and are consistently rated “excellent” on Trustpilot. The Gym Group is the UK’s first carbon neutral gym chain. For more information on The Gym Group visit: https://www.thegymgroup.com/.