Purple Eagle LLC uses Smartsheet to simplify and automate spa management and scale to support ambitious business growth

Purple Eagle LLC is a franchisee of Hand and Stone Massage and Facial Spas, a growing company that offers top-quality spa services including therapeutic massage, facials, and hair removal. Purple Eagle owns 18 Hand and Stone Massage and Facial Spa franchises, with plans to grow to over 50 in the next five years. 

Since 2020, Purple Eagle has used Smartsheet to manage service provider schedules, keep track of room cleanings, update massage therapist licenses, and handle customer complaints.

“Smartsheet has made it easy for us to manage 18 spas in five states,” says Jeff Flannery, CEO and Founder of Purple Eagle LLC. “We wouldn’t have been able to grow from two spas to 18 spas in just a few years without Smartsheet.”

Before 2020, Purple Eagle lacked visibility into each spa’s business, including massage therapist schedules, service provider utilization, and managing customer relationships. To manage these tasks, the company relied on a combination of email and a legacy scheduling platform, which was inefficient. “We had a lot of business challenges we couldn’t solve with the technology we had,” Flannery says. “For example, when service providers clean a room, they’re supposed to go to the front desk and wait for the staff person to inspect the room before the provider could receive a cash tip from a customer. This process often took too long, and it led to frustrated staff and customers.” 

In addition, massage therapists and other service providers did not have a reliable method for tracking job performance. “They had no good way to see how they were performing, and neither did corporate leadership,” Flannery says. Purple Eagle also needed a more accurate way of monitoring sales and conversion rates. 

Using Smartsheet to Simplify the Management of Daily Tasks 

After evaluating Smartsheet, Flannery and his team adopted the software across the company. “We’re a small, growing company, and I always had ambitions to find a platform that could support a much larger organization,” he says. “Smartsheet is that platform.”

Employees at each spa start using Smartsheet on their first day of employment, filing out all human resources onboarding forms within the tool. Employees then use Smartsheet to manage service provider schedules and assign rooms for customer appointments. Each massage therapist fills out a Smartsheet form at the end of a work shift to check rooms out. Any sales associate can read the therapist’s report in a Smartsheet dashboard, which contains updated pictures of the condition of each room.

Purple Eagle uses Smartsheet to measure service provider performance, resource utilization, and spa sales and conversion rates for each location. Purple Eagle uses Data Shuttle by Smartsheet to upload data from Smartsheet into an internal reporting tool to give organizational leaders visibility into sales and performance metrics. Using Smartsheet Dynamic View, Purple Eagle managers can view performance data broken down by spa or individual employee.

Purple Eagle also uses workflow automation in Smartsheet to automatically remind massage therapists about upcoming license and insurance expiration dates. The company also uses workflow automation to integrate Smartsheet with the company’s internal Slack channel to send automatic notifications to prize winners in the company’s gift card contest.

Making the Invisible Visible

By relying on Smartsheet, Purple Eagle service providers have updated schedule, appointment, and room cleaning information at their fingertips every day. As a result, each spa has increased accountability through real-time performance metrics such as attendance and the number of room-check violations. Through Smartsheet dashboards, and integration with the internal scheduling platform, the Purple Eagle leadership team now has access to the same metrics, and can more easily manage each spa. “When you’re managing 18 locations, you have to keep track of so many different things. Smartsheet has made the invisible visible when it comes to what’s going on at each of those locations,” says Flannery. “I can see every customer complaint, every employee request, and each person’s schedule in a dashboard, even if I’m 2,000 miles away. I can also measure resource utilization, which was difficult previously.”

With better visibility, Purple Eagle senior managers can take action if, for example, a customer complaint takes too long to resolve.

“Even if the sales are good at a spa, we can now see if there are any cracks underneath the surface as far as customer service,” Flannery says. “We’re much more proactive as a result of Smartsheet.”

A Faster, Easier Way to Drive Business Growth

Because Smartsheet automates management processes, Purple Eagle has simplified and streamlined previously manual tasks. “A spa manager’s job is very complex, and running a spa can be chaotic when there are 30 different employee requests or schedules to keep track of,” says Flannery. “Smartsheet has simplified everything, and each manager now has fast, easy access to daily tasks and customer information they might need to address.”

The automation in Smartsheet has helped Purple Eagle grow more quickly and more easily. “By automating management processes in Smartsheet, we’ve been able to scale the business,” says Flannery.

“We’ve gone from $1 million to $20 million in revenue, and from two to 18 spas since adopting Smartsheet. We expect to be a $100 million business with 50 spas in the next five years, and we wouldn’t have been able to do that without Smartsheet.”

As Purple Eagle continues to grow throughout the United States, it plans to keep using Smartsheet. “We will continue automating and centralizing processes in Smartsheet,” says Flannery. “Smartsheet helps make our jobs easier, and we know it will help us solve whatever business challenges come our way.”

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