BPM streamlines operations for youth activities company YEB

Private equity-owned Youth Enrichment Brands benefits from NetSuite migration

Youth Enrichment Brands (YEB) is one of the largest youth development, summer camps, and after-school program companies in the United States, serving more than 850,000 children each year. YEB comprises several different brands that have been incorporated under its umbrella as the company has grown, including US Sports Camps, i9 Sports, Streamline Brands, KE Camps and School of Rock.

YEB’s mission is to help children discover and develop lifelong passions, from baseball to swimming. It seeks to be best-in-class in its camps, classes, music education and sports leagues. Growing fast, YEB also looks to constantly evolve. That led to discussions with BPM about improving financial and operational systems across its organization and finding ways to automate essential tasks.

Accelerating the business: Financial systems, automation, registration, e-commerce

BPM evaluated core operations at one entity as a means of understanding YEB as a whole. YEB had multiple operations distinct from one another and running separate P&Ls, as often is the case with companies that grow on parallel tracks, organically and by “bolt-on” acquisitions. Its operations include company-owned operations and franchisees. This meant redundant financial and accounting systems, a lack of transparency about financials at the roll-up level, and little automation, as most of YEB’s smaller operations relied heavily on paper-based enrollment forms and Excel, for example. It also led to challenges such as tracking and applying cash payments.

Both YEB and its private equity investors welcomed an opportunity to migrate to a financial and accounting system that would automate iterative tasks and help them realize ROI. NetSuite was an obvious choice, not only because of its cloud-based, real-time financial and accounting capabilities, but because it allows for seamless integration with each operation’s respective e-commerce front-end.

In turn, NetSuite allows YEB to streamline and simplify operations from the first instance of “customer touch” at registration through billing and add-on merchandise sales. It provides far greater flexibility in reporting, speeds monthly closes and provides more transparency to C-suite leadership at the top level — a critical oversight and risk management capability.

BPM adopted its proven NetSuite Accelerator Program methodology to improve and support financial reporting and operations at one YEB entity. On the strength of our success with that initiative, we were asked by YEB to extend our work to more company operations and those of important franchisees. Our objectives were to lower costs, improve efficiency, standardize processes and provide real-time visibility into performance across the broad portfolio of companies with a single click.

We identified opportunities for process automation and business improvements that took direct costs out of the business and improved YEB’s bottom line. The corollary benefit to the private equity owners is that BPM rolled successively through several of its portfolio company operations — quickly and accurately — in a way that is replicable and efficient. As new operations are folded into the growing company, BPM is ready on “Day Zero” of the roll-up to efficiently integrate new acquisitions into the ERP platform.

BPM’s engagement continues to succeed as we move from independent operation to operation. We have accelerated enrollment and order-processing time, reduced costs by eliminating redundant hardware and/or software licenses, cut the time to monthly closing in half, and provided dashboards for fast, accurate, portfolio-wide reporting.

Notes YEB’s CFOBPM helped us make it happen in an accelerated timeframe. We’re running faster — and better — as a result.”

For more information about BPM’s NetSuite Accelerator Program, contact us.