School of Rock Case Study

CASE STUDY

The Opportunity

Paul Green invited some of his music students to join a jam session with his band and a few took him up on the offer. A few weeks later, Paul noticed that the students who kept playing together made a lot more progress than those who continued with solo instruction only. From a casual invitation and his chance observation, the School of Rock was born.

In 2002 Paul Green opened the first official School of Rock location in Philadelphia with more than 100 students. He quickly expanded to surrounding cities and counties, and then to San Francisco, New York, Austin, and other cities around the country.

The School of Rock franchise used an enterprise business management system that was powerful but too complicated and confusing for individual franchise owners and teachers. Typically, these former guitar players and rocker moms and dads have a passion for teaching and sharing their love of music with kids, not for learning the ins and outs of complex enterprise software.

Franchisees were also experiencing a lot of software-related pain—unreliability, unresponsiveness, and sluggishness in scheduling. Owners and managers needed to be able to sign students in with ease and know whether they were up-to-date on payments. And School of Rock needed it all to be smartphone-friendly to keep up with modern parents who schedule their family’s life on the fly.

The Solution

School of Rock found that Pike13 could meet their software checklist and decided to move their hundreds of locations onto the mobile-friendly platform.

"Pike13 is not just a point of service (POS) software platform—they’ve become our trusted partner. Pike13 takes our feedback and makes the changes we need to improve efficiency in running our schools.”

The simplicity of Pike13 makes it possible for School of Rock’s IT team to support franchises on the software. Because Pike13 is so intuitive, they no longer have to spend hours and hours training staff.

"Pike13 made it so easy for us to look at the global picture of the company down to the minutest detail. We can see where follow-up is needed for some of our local schools with customer conversions, and we can step in and give additional training to take those schools to the next level."

The Results

Today, the fast-growing School of Rock franchise has over 200 music schools in eight countries and dozens more expected to open over the next years. Some 17,000 young music lovers, from pre-school-age children on up, gather at the School of Rock to learn music in their performance-based and inspirational music programs.

The clarity that Pike13 gives makes it easy for the corporate office to properly track franchise royalties. This proves to be a two-fold advantage for the franchise owners.

"Pike13 has made communication much easier between the corporate office and the franchisees and staff, as well as between staff and student. Before Pike13 we weren’t able to streamline communications internally or externally, and now it’s seamless. Everyone knows where and when a class, lesson, or rehearsal is taking place, who the student is, and if the lesson still needs to be paid."

The click of a button is all it takes to open a new School of Rock franchise in Pike13. Welcoming new locations is as simple as creating a new web address for them and adding them to corporate reporting. They can get down to the business of teaching music right away.

“We don’t have to worry that we’ve missed a step. All of the pieces are in place to onboard a new franchise, and we can be confident that the new school is set up to succeed.”

Franchise owners have been over the moon about Pike13. They love being able to track their business in real-time and be both better educated and informed about their business. And most of all, they love that they're able to dedicate more time to building client relationships.

"Relationships are the most important part of running a school, and when things like scheduling and billing get in the way of the relationship there’s an immediate barrier to what we’re there to provide—the students’ education. It’s all integrated in Pike13 and eliminates the need for stressful money conversations, making it easier for us to manage our checks and balances and report back accurately to the corporate office.”