PADEXA for Operators · AI Ops Audit

Twenty AI ideas won't change your club. One working workflow might.

We find where your venue is losing bookings, repeat play and staff time, rank the workflows worth fixing by business value, and build the first one with you. Live in 30 days, with the number to prove it.

Find out if your club is a fit See a sample audit ↗

20 minutes. No preparation. If an audit isn't justified, I'll tell you. · Remote or on-site · by Ross Thornley, founder of PADEXA

The problem

You probably don't need another AI tool.

Most racket-sports venues already have enough software. The problem is the work between the systems: enquiries sitting in inboxes, new players nobody follows up, leagues run from a spreadsheet and three WhatsApp groups, dormant players nobody notices, reports assembled by hand, staff answering the same questions differently. That's where we start. AI comes afterwards.

You probably recognise these

Slow repliesWeb-form and Instagram enquiries answered the next day, while the phone gets answered in seconds.
No second bookingNew players book once. Nobody prompts the second one. You don't know your 30-day return rate.
Quiet lapsesRegulars stop coming and a coach notices six weeks later.
Event adminSign-ups, reminders, results and payment chasing done by hand, every week.
Sunday reportingThe weekly view assembled from three systems by the owner.
"Ask Sam"Prices, pathways and policies live in one person's head.

Example · illustrative six-court venue

What an audit finds.

A fictional venue, so you can see the shape of the thing before you buy it. Every number below is invented to show the format.

candidate workflows identified

worth investigating now

passed the feasibility threshold

#1 · New-player follow-up

Today

Staff occasionally message players they remember. Nothing systematic.

Baseline

240 new players a quarter; 31% book again within 30 days.

What gets built

Segmented 24-hour and 7-day follow-up drafted from booking data, in the club's voice, approved by staff in under five minutes a day.

Measure

Second booking within 30 days; target range 38–45% over six weeks.

Human control

Every message approved for the first four weeks; a log of everything sent; an off switch.

Decision

Build it, or don't. The report is yours either way.

The full sample report (fourteen workflows, the leakage map, the do-not-automate list and the First Workflow page) is available as a PDF on request or from the fit call.

What you get

Three things, not a maturity score.

Where you're leaking value.

One visual map of your customer journey and operations, marked in four currencies: pounds, hours, customer friction and risk. Ranges, not false precision, and every figure traced to a source.

What's worth fixing.

Eight to fifteen candidate workflows scored on value, feasibility, confidence, effort and risk, with estimated economics. Each gets one of five verdicts: automate, redesign first, integrate, train, or leave alone.

What to do first.

One workflow. One baseline. One owner. One success metric. One implementation design. One decision date. This page is the product; the other two justify it.

Also in every audit

What not to automate. A named list, with the reasoning: the human moments, the data that isn't there yet, the supplier plan that blocks it, the value that's too small to bother with.

How it works

Two weeks to decide. Thirty days to live.

The audit · remote 7–10 working days · on-site 10–15

Discover

Days 0–2

Intake and systems inventory, a 60-minute owner interview, a 90-minute workshop with the people who run the work, twelve months of booking data if you can export it. On-site: a full day at the venue, peak to off-peak.

Quantify

Days 3–6

The leakage map, the ranked register with economics, and a feasibility check on each shortlisted workflow: data, integration route, adoption, governance.

Decide

Days 7–10

The report before the call, a 60-minute readout, and the First Workflow page. Then you decide.

First Workflow · 30 days

Week 1

Define

Spec, baseline measured, data access, approval gates and fallback agreed, the number in writing.

Week 2

Build

Agent or app built and tested on last month's real data. You see the twenty outputs it would have produced.

Week 3

Embed

Live with approval on. A 60-minute staff session, a one-page runbook, daily check-ins.

Week 4

Measure

Baseline versus result. Tune. Hand over. Thirty days of stabilisation included.

What we might recommend

Five verdicts, one at a time.

AutomateAn agent or app takes the repeated work; a person approves what reaches a customer.
Redesign firstThe process is the problem; fix it on paper before anyone builds anything.
IntegrateYour booking platform already does it. Switch it on, connect it, stop re-keying.
TrainA one-page answer sheet beats a chatbot when the problem is consistency.
Leave aloneThe human moment, the missing data, the tiny value. Named, with the reason.

Workflows we build most

New-player follow-upSecond booking within 30 days
Enquiry-to-bookingResponse time; first-booking rate
Dormant-player signalsReactivated players a month
Off-peak activationOff-peak utilisation
Event and league adminAdmin hours per event
Management reportingReporting hours; decisions made
Staff knowledge assistantTime to answer; consistency

Who it's for

Venues that have outgrown the inbox.

✓Padel and racket-sports venue operators, one to ten venues
✓Four or more courts, a digital booking system, a team that runs the work
✓Meaningful recurring admin: events, leagues, coaching, memberships, enquiries
✓Willing to measure a baseline before anything is built

Not for, at least not yet

–Single-court clubs without a booking system (PADEXA Club is the better fit)
–Back-office automation for brands, suppliers or media businesses
–Anyone who wants a guaranteed return without a baseline

Why Ross

Operator first. Builder second. Adviser third.

I don't advise businesses about AI from slides. I build businesses with it.

Business operatorThree decades building companies.
AI practitionerTen years applying AI inside businesses; dozens of applications built; PADEXA runs day to day on agents.
Racket-sports operatorBuilding PADEXA inside the industry. Author of The Little Book of Padel. Opening panel, Racket Sports Business Expo 2026.

The overlooked problem in automation isn't the software; it's whether staff adopt the new workflow. As co-founder and CEO of AQai, Ross has trained more than 500 coaches, consultants and HR practitioners in adaptability. That's the part no agency brings.

The independence promise

The audit doesn't assume you need more AI.

Some workflows should be automated. Some should be redesigned first. Some should stay human. Some aren't worth touching. You get a written list of what not to automate, and you keep the report whatever you decide next. If you build with us, half the audit fee comes off the build.

Pricing

Fixed prices. No day rates.

Prices exclude VAT. Three founding places at a lower rate for venues that will measure a baseline and let us publish what we learn, anonymised; discussed on the call.

AI Ops Audit · remote

£2,500

7–10 working days. Owner interview, staff workshop, data review, the three deliverables, a 60-minute readout.

AI Ops Audit · on-site

£4,500

Everything in remote, plus a full day at your venue: observation, shadowing, the player journey walked, a live workshop. Travel beyond 60 miles recharged.

First Workflow

£7,500

One agent or app defined, built, embedded and measured in 30 days. Thirty days of stabilisation included. Half the audit fee credited when booked within 60 days.

Run

£1,750 /month

Monitoring, fixes, a monthly improvement cycle, staff office hours, a one-page report. Run+ at £3,500 adds a new workflow every quarter. Three-month minimum.

Already know the workflow?

Prototype in 7 days, £1,250. Skip the audit. A working prototype of the workflow you already know you need, in a week, credited in full against First Workflow.

Multi-site groups

From £9,500, scoped. One audit across the group, one register, and the workflow that pays back fastest across every venue.

Questions owners ask

Straight answers.

What about our players' data?+

Your data stays yours. It's processed only for this engagement under a data processing agreement, never used to train models, and never pooled with other clients. We read what the workflow needs and nothing else. Junior-player data is excluded from any outbound automation unless documented consent exists.

We're on Playtomic. Can you actually connect to it?+

Yes, with limits, and we'll tell you which. Playtomic's Club API is read-only and needs a Champion or Master plan: agents can read bookings and players and react, but can't write bookings. CourtReserve's API reads and writes on its Advance plan and above. Anything else runs on exports and a human-in-the-loop step. The audit checks your plan before recommending a workflow.

What stays human?+

The welcome at the desk, coaching relationships, complaints, and anything you tell us must always be a person. Every agent that touches a customer has an approval gate your team can tighten or loosen, a log of what it did, and an off switch.

What if the workflow doesn't move the number?+

Then the results note says so. We measure a baseline before anything is built, read the number at day 30 and day 60, and write down what didn't work. No result is promised; the honesty is the point.

How much of our time does it take?+

Remote audit: about four hours across two weeks. On-site: one day plus the readout. First Workflow: about six hours over thirty days plus a two-minute daily check-in for the first ten working days.

Do we have to build with you?+

No. You keep the report and can implement with anyone. If you build with us, half the audit fee comes off the First Workflow.

Start with one workflow.

Bring the process that causes the most delay, repetition or uncertainty. Twenty minutes will tell us whether an audit can turn it into a measured first test.

Find out if your club is a fit

or email hello@padexa.ai · Looking for PADEXA on your courts instead? See PADEXA Club