Council considers new point-of-sale system for Point Mallard Park

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Jun. 14—The Decatur City Council is considering a proposal to hire a technology company to create a custom point-of-sale online system for Point Mallard Park.
Stephanie McLain, Parks and Recreation operations manager, proposed hiring Medhtech, of Shelby County, to create the system for $120,000 a year for the next three years.
She initially presented the proposal at the June 2 meeting, but council members had questions so it's now on Monday's agenda.
McLain said Point Mallard's water park, campground and golf course run on different operating systems.
She said the campground "as of now has no support," so should it fail, "we would have to go back to managing 216 (camping) sites with handwritten notes or EXCEL spreadsheets."
Medhtech owner Dharmesh Vora said the "data is desperate" because it is in different systems.
"If something goes wrong, there is no support or everything goes into management," said Vora, who met with multiple members of the Point Mallard administration to discuss their issues.
McLain said the Aquatic Park can't sell a daily pass or admission ticket online so the customer can pick certain days to attend. People are unable to load money online to an armband the park provides so they don't have to carry cash.
"All of these things you have to come to the park to do," she said.
McLain said golfers are unable to book tee times or reserve a cart online. This requires calling and speaking to a team member during regular business hours, she said.
"If you decide at 8 p.m. that you and a couple of buddies wanted to play golf the next day, you have to wait until morning to book that tee time," she said.
McLain said she believes a more user-friendly system would create more business for the park.
A major problem with the current systems is management of labor at the park. If it's a rainy day, McLain said, it's difficult to know how many employees to send home or allow to continue working because they can't tell exactly how many people are still in the park.
She said they would like to know where to target the park's marketing efforts, but the current system don't show where the guests are visiting from.
McLain said the park doesn't offer payment options for water park or golf passes that they would like to provide.
"This would allow people to split up their purchases of season passes into three or four easy payments," McLain said. "A lot of us don't have the money to pay all of a pass at one time. This is a great feature that we could offer our community."
McLain said Information Services helped her department search for an affordable alternative, including talking to people at conferences.
She said one system they looked at is used by a lot of amusement parks, but the cost estimate was $1 million for installation and use and $500,000 for support.
McLain said some they looked at didn't offer real-time data. Some companies offered online purchases but didn't allow an overnight reservation or everything they need to manage the park's business.
Vora said his company would create a customer-relationship management system that's cloud-based for Point Mallard.
"The important essence is not just catching the transaction, but how you roll it up to a financial transaction at a city level," Vora said. "We want a system that offers the services that customers are interested in, what we as a city can provide and where we can reach out to these customers."
Council President Jacob Ladner asked if any of the system has already been developed or does it have to be built from the ground up.
Vora said they're going to use an open-source system with "everything built into it," and then work with McLain to modify it to Point Mallard's needs.
McLain said they would use money in the fiscal 2025 budget that's allocated for a new park app that the former Parks and Recreation director wanted but the current point-of-sale systems don't support.
She said they would also use money they're paying for customer service and support of their current point-of-sale systems, which she called "very subpar."
They would then have to add funding for the project in the following two budget years.
"If we go through the first year and everything doesn't cost as much, that cost could be lower," McLain said.
Vora said they will offer 24/7 service funded with the 20% cost for annual support, which he said is an industry standard.
At the request of Councilman Billy Jackson in the June 2 meeting, Vora on Monday said he created a three-year schedule for the project with the goal of creating a point-of-sale system for the campground and golf course in fiscal 2025, Aquatic Park in 2026 and the new event center and Strike Zone in 2027.
Councilman Carlton McMasters said Monday that he is concerned that the 20% might not cover unanticipated expenses or the project will take longer than planned.
"That's not our fault if it takes longer to build out," McMasters said.
Vora said the annual ceiling is $120,000 plus the 20% for support. His proposal shows six to seven Medhtech employees working on the project.
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