Employee of the year: high-tech manager makes the grade.

Tim awoke to the sound of his alarm clock. Shutting off the clock, he glanced at the message the office computer had sent him: "Good morning, Tim. You have seven unread e-mail messages. I have printed payroll. Today's appointments: 7:30 a.m. Aquatics Admin Board meeting tour. 11:00 a.m. Guard Team B drills. Phil 9000.

This is how the day might begin if you had a real time management information system at your facility. At the Phillips Park Family Aquatic Center (PPFAC) in Aurora, Illinois, the computer has become the facility's communication center.

The computer age in Aurora started in early 1991. Faced with the challenges of growing gang violence and cultural and economic diversity, the Fox Valley Park District faced the challenge of making its new $5 million family aquatic center safe and customer-friendly.

The result was the implementation of police protection via a high-tech computer system nicknamed "Phil 9000."

Phil 9000 is the first computer Management Information System (MIS) to hit the public leisure industry. It tracks data on each user's demographics, attendance, transactions, rule violations, and even medical information. Phil not only keeps the facility safe but keeps operations streamlined and maximizes organization, all without piles of burdensome paperwork. Not only can managers dial in from home to check current revenue, attendance, and staffing costs but Phil also alerts management when it detects discrepancies or disturbing changes related to staff, check ins, operations, or cash control. Phil 9000 became a valuable team member as the Fox Valley Park District's Aquatics Administration Board defined new levels of frugality and customer services.

Phil 9000 has a unique approach to problems. Traditional computers require an operator to feed in data actively and a management expert to study reports and answer specific questions. As a real-time operating system that can perform several tasks simultaneously, Phil 9000 thinks more independently. Phil monitors events as they happen with minimal traditional data entry. It then notifies the system manager about problems as they develop. As a result, the system can save time and money by uncovering and handling problems before they escalate into crises.

The key to the system's success is to select events that can be monitored electronically which also are essential management barometers. At the Phillips Park Family Aquatic Center the employee time clock, the entrance turnstile, and the cashier stations are among the management components monitored by the system.

The Time Clock

Aquatics staff use a bar-coded i.d. badge to clock in and out. To monitor staff's use of the time clock, managment creates the staff schedule on the computer so Phil 9000 knows who is authorized to punch in and how to code payroll. As a result, when staff clock in, employee costs can be determined for the current hour. Next, by cross-referencing payroll data to the admissions data, Phil can compare staffing efficiency day to day, shift to shift, hour to hour, or minute by minute. Overstaffing becomes apparent immediately.

And the system makes it difficult--if not impossible--for staff to cheat on timecards or falsify their schedule.

Phil 9000 generates time sheets and payroll summary reports for more than 100 employees in minutes. Payroll records are available continuously to the manager so he or she can monitor these regularly. This saves time at the end of the pay period.

But Phil isn't just management's friend. It also keeps staff informed by displaying the day's Aquatics Center calendar constantly, including daily events and staff phone messages.

At the Entrance Turnstile

With all guests using bar-coded i.d. cards or wristbands, Phil can recognize trouble quickly. When two friends use the same pass, Phil catches them. Phil also screens out guests that have been kicked out for behavior problems, expired season passes, and resident daily i.d. card holders who have not yet paid fees for the day.

And the system can be used to leave messages for individual facility customers, while simultaneously clocking in lifeguards and running the cash registers.

Cash Registers

Phil captures data at the cash register, which saves time and eliminates many errors in data summary. Phil also runs the register, speeding transactions and limiting employee thefts.

At Phillips Park, Phil knows how much money should be in a cash register or in the accounting office. Only after the money is safely deposited at the bank will Phil summarize the transactions for the accountant. Also, only Phil can assign value to season passes or daily tickets, making it difficult for cashiers to give away passes or pocket money by not ringing up a sale.

Phil also generates historical reports for each cashier from an on-line journal that keeps data, time, and operator information on each and every transaction. The managers can view this summary by cashier, type of register, or date. Phil can be programmed to alert the manager of any voids automatically.

Tom Waller, the systems analyst who created Phil 9000 also has developed technology that would allow the Fox Valley Park District to watch cashiers via video or use of video snapshots to record voids or time clock use. However, to date, Phil's current controls have proved more than adequate for the District.

In the concession stand, Phil tracks inventory based on actual transactions and suggests product orders based on target stock levels. Once orders are confirmed, Phil creates purchase orders for management to approve.

Not only does Phil 9000 gather operations data to control costs in real time but Phil's demographic data helps the district define its capital program and balance services through the community. Phil 9000's demographic data gathers real attendance data at the gate on every imaginable variable, yielding reports by age, sex, neighborhood, zip code, street, and other data.

This data can be useful to keep facility operations streamlined.

Phil also cleans household data by searching for similar names and addresses and combining duplicate addresses. Then Phil further validates residency by cross-referencing U.S. postal computer data, thereby eliminating old or phony addresses.

Employee of the Year

As a staff member, Phil is never late, always honest, and helps managers make good decisions. It can handle several customers at once and is so reliable and quick that his fellow staff always are more efficient when Phil is around. Phil never forgets and helpfully reminds staff and management of meetings. Phil communicates efficiently, reaching everyone on a need-to-know basis. It communicates to managers wherever they are.

The management of the PPFA Center has found this facility-based management system to be significantly different than any system they had ever used. Management found the impact on cost controls afforded by e-mail, word processing, text pagers, voice mail, and real-time information to dwarf the effectiveness of the old monthly financial statement. Phil 9000 gives management the information they need now to impact the bottom line when there still is time to do something about it.