Contribution recognition and sports organizations

September 7th, 2010

It takes many people to pull off a season of sports successfully.

It is ironic that, often in my observation,  the better the contribution to that successful sports season the less recognition that contribution gets.

For example; the first four years my son was in soccer all of the soccer fields he played on were mud pits by the last half of the season because we live in the rainy pacific northwest. At some point the fields mostly seems to stay relatively mud free through most or all of each season. The value of this to all concerned was huge. Despite this value the contribution was not noticed at a conscious level and it certainly got no recognition or thanks.

The point is that while we may “get away” with not giving recognition for contributions, both the team spirit and the likelihood that the contribution will continue are much less without recognition in my experience.

At Bonzi we know our role and our contribution in most of the sports organizations we serve and only need one kind of recognition; that our teams continue to use our software every year. Sure, we like and want other forms of recognition but we really only need and hope for continued use of the software. Continued use really says it all to us.

Consider taking a look around at all that it takes to run a successful sports season and making that extra effort if you don’t already to acknowledge and recognize the wide variety of contributions that made the season possible. I have been impressed by some of the coaches and parents at the season end pizza parties that lightly but thoroughly cover many and maybe even most of the contributions, large and small, that made a season possible. I’ve also notices the smiles and glow coming from people who thought that their minor contribution had not been seen when to their delight they got a bit of recognition.

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Posted in Acknowlegement, Coaching, Communication, Developing Kids, Volunteers | No Comments »

What do people care most about with online sports registration software?

August 31st, 2010

What do people care most about with online sports registration software; surprisingly the answer is… REPORTING.

We were stunned. While people love:

  1. Lowest overall cost
  2. Great personal support
  3. Easy to use but powerful
  4. No contracts
  5. Your money in your bank account

The thing that they hate most about online sports registration software from companies OTHER THAN Bonzi is that reporting is a nightmare.

See, most online sports registration software usually has a few canned (pre-packaged) reports with no or little flexibility for change or customization.

Say you want to report all of the players in a league who are members of a certain grade school so you can let them know about a special event in your sport that will be happening near their school. In many online sports registration software packages you’ll have to let all players who are in grade school,  regardless of the specific school, know about the event despite the fact that the information will be of no use to most of those getting the message.

In Bonzi you could either select the group you wanted and email them all from the system or you could build a customer report with a few clicks and print the report out so someone could call them all on the phone.

The bottom line with reporting for online sports registration software when you use Bonzi is that if you can dream up the report and you have the data in the system… you can build the report no matter how unusual it may be; there are literally no limits to reporting with Bonzi online sports registration software!

Posted in Communication, How to Choose, Parents Win | No Comments »

Sports Registration Reporting

August 13th, 2010

According to a recent informal survey the number one thing current sports software users wanted that they currently didn’t have was better reporting.

The big issue was for many that  the available reports didn’t give them what they needed to operate their club, league or organization.

What they wanted was the ability to generate any report that they could dream up that would meet their needs; they wanted reporting their way.

Almost as important was that they wanted reporting to be so easy that anyone in their organization could start cold and produce any report.

Finally, if they needed help to generate a particular report they wanted that help to be free, capable and quickly available live.

Bonzi hasn’t heard a reporting need that would couldn’t meet even once in the last ten years; with Bonzi if you can dream up the report, have the data in your system, you can have the report. It’s just that easy.

Some organizations we speak with have been through three or more sports software companies before they found one that could do what Bonzi can do in reporting. We’ve also never heard of another company that could do it nearly as well.

Is reporting important to you? If so, check out Bonzi by calling Ricky Aker at 503-620-6661 X224 for a no-pressure discussion of your specific needs and wants.

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Impact; It’s The Difference You Can Count On In Your Next Youth Sports Software

August 11th, 2010

Impact; let’s face it, it’s what we want when we take an action in life.

When we choose something to add or subtract from our life we are hoping that we get an impact we both want and can feel. Is there anything more frustrating than to take an action that requires effort, risk, time, money, and political capital and either have nothing discernible happen or have something we don’t want happen?

When choosing youth sports software it is all too easy to not only not get what you wanted but to also be locked in to what you don’t want for years. The consequence of a bad choice in youth sports software can be deep frustration, wasted time, wasted money and heavy political cost to say nothing of compromised relationships.

Why are these consequences so high? For starters almost all youth sports software companies want to lock you in. They do this with auto-renewing long term contracts, no guarantees that what they promise is what they’ll deliver, and the most insidious is that they doubly lock up your data; you can’t export it and you can’t even report it in the ways your situation demands.

Bonzi youth sports software takes a different approach to all this:

  1. No contracts!
  2. Your full satisfaction is guaranteed
  3. Your data is never locked up
  4. If you can dream up a report you can have it; instantly
  5. Impact

The key to the list above is #5: impact. Our theory at Bonzi is that if you get the desired impact today and every day from Bonzi’s Youth Sports Software that nothing else will matter. For over ten years 100% of Bonzi’s thousands of customers has gotten the impact they came for every month, every year. They must have because not one of them has been locked into a contract and could have left at a moments notice.

The consequences of a bad choice in youth sports software is, we think you’ll agree, very high; you don’t get the impact you wanted and you are now locked in for years to come. The consequence of choosing Bonzi is that either you’ll get the impact you sought or you’ll be free to make a different choice.

In this nation we are a bit short on trust these days. We are short on trust because many feel that they have been burned over and over again; think oil spills, Wall Street, health insurance, and any of the hundreds of other pain points that seem to pop up every day. The big issue seems to be when people or youth sports software companies want you to give them your trust instead of earning it. At Bonzi we just want the chance to earn your trust… and re-earn that trust every 30 days for ever.

Just imagine if your car company said “if we ever let you down you can bring the car back and stop making the payments immediately”. What if your employer said “if we don’t keep our promises to you we’ll step down and you can get a new manager or management team in here tomorrow”. In essence that is what Bonzi says every day to each of our thousands of customers. And, knock-on-wood, nobody has ever said “get lost”.

You see Bonzi is willing to take the consequences if we don’t give you the impact you were seeking when you signed up unlike most of our competitors who rely upon contracts and lousy software to lock you in.

So it’s you choice; do you want a youth sports software company who is willing to immediately accept the consequences if they don’t achieve the impact you were looking for or do you want to “trust” a story from a company that is so un-confident in their ability to give you the impact you seek that they have to lock you in with an auto-renew contract to keep you from seeking alternatives?

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Posted in How to Choose, Parents Win, Performance, Reporting, Uncategorized, Value, Wins for Parents | No Comments »

Football Season Around The Corner

August 10th, 2010

To those of us who go to kids football games football season is still a ways off. For those of you with kids playing football; football season is already in full swing for many.

I played football at a very small high school. Like everyone else we endured daily doubles and we hurt for weeks no matter how hard we had trained over the summer. Unlike most other schools, our starters played both ways most of every game. It was exhausting to say the least.

There was a hidden reward however. After the halfway mark in the season we were all in incredible physical condition from so much playing time. It was easy to see when the other guys hit the outer edge of their fitness window. Sadly this conditioning advantage did not result in more wins. At the time I thought is was simply our talent but now I wonder.

What has really made me wonder is www.usafootball.com. See USA Football through it’s affiliation with the NFL really has the goods on learning to be a better coach and run a better team. My high school coach was a good guy but he knew next to nothing about what it really took to coach other than getting out there and trying hard.

Please check out www.usafootbal.com and see if what they offer makes sense for you and your organization;

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sports schedule software

August 3rd, 2010

Bonzi sports schedule software can cover the following schedule challenges with ease:

Multi-Conference Divisions: add your teams, conferences and divisions and let Bonzi take care of the rest.

Conference ‘No-Plays’: Bonzi can easily accommodate any blend of play, no-play combinations.

Date, Time, and Field Blocks: Any constraint such as a holiday, day of week or other conflict is no problem.

Automatically generates all game match-ups: Each team can have a balanced number of home and away games and the games will be evenly distributed across all possible opponents.

Schedule smoothing: Each teams schedule will be logically spread across the dates and times throughout season as well as across all of the allowed fields of play.

Minimum days between games: Now you can insure that your pitchers have the required rest time between games.

Game lengths: Divisions can have different game lengths within the same schedule.

Maximum away games: balance home and away.

Home field preferences: set any home or away field preference that makes sense for your situation.

Export team, division, or field schedules to PDF, Excel, XML, CSV.

Game Scores: Update a fresh score wirelessly or from your iPhone and watch the rankings change instantly just as you’d expect.

Better than drag and drop… click and drop schedule interface: You can to tweak your schedule by simply clicking and dropping the games or venues. Conflict checks will automatically be performed for you. This way you will be warned if you are going to break any of your own rules.

Try it… we think you’ll like it!

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What Creates Value in The Sports Software Market?

August 2nd, 2010

Value is simple in theory to understand but far trickier to capture in the components of daily life.

In most cases, the dictionary definition of “value” is descriptive and pertains more to the definition of the term “worth”, rather than “value”. It’s hard to apply that definition to how daunting value can be in general and in relation to sports software. I’d prefer something a bit more mathematical… something like this:

While the dictionaries are right about value being the same as worth it doesn’t go quite capture what “value” can really mean to a person. Our society operates on the largely unspoken idea that when we exchange money for something both parties feel like they got more than they gave up. With that in mind I’d like to suggest that for many of us the perception of value is the difference between what we gave up and what we get. If what we get is greater than what we gave, we often say that we got “great value”.

Value takes on yet another dimension when we consider the following:

  1. The urgency of a need is great. This can often be because there is great pain or discomfort with the status quo.
  2. There are few or no alternatives to satisfactorily meet the need.
  3. There is solid proof that if you act the need will be satisfactorily met.
  4. The solution being proposed to meet my need or objective has been specifically developed for my situation and I can be confident it will fit my need very well.

These factors drive value higher and higher. In most businesses you can expect to pay a fairly high premium when a solution meets these four criteria.

Every day Bonzi sports software speaks with people who either use one of our competitors, do sports management with an Excel spreadsheet or are still stuck using paper and pencil. From these thousands of conversations come the following conclusions:

  1. The urgency of a need is great. There is great pain or discomfort with the status quo in sports software.
  2. There are few or no alternatives to satisfactorily meet the need; for many once they understand the Bonzi sports software value proposition they realize that there really is no viable substitute for what Bonzi offers.
  3. There is solid proof that if you act the need will be satisfactorily met. 99.9% of customers that have started with Bonzi sports software over the last decade are still customers because Bonzi meets and exceeds their expectations every day.
  4. The solution being proposed to meet my need or objective has been specifically developed for my situation and I can be confident it will fit my need very well.

This is why both new and old users of Bonzi sports software feel that Bonzi is far and away the best value in the sports software market in north america.

The irony is that many organizations would charge a high price if they were in a similar position. What does Bonzi do? Bonzi is committed to being the lowest overall cost solution on the market with the best support, no contracts, your money in your bank account operation AND providing the best value in sports software today.

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Posted in Performance, Value, Wins for Parents | No Comments »

Why New League Scheduling Software Is Your Best Bet!

July 29th, 2010

Technology associated with league scheduling software is continuously changing at warp speed. What might have been tolerable software two years ago, might now be considered league scheduling software from the stone age.

One company, for example, calls themselves the “undisputed leader” in league scheduling software and yet they can only schedule groups of 40 teams. Additionally, their solution requires a separate module for tournaments and it appears that none of this is fully integrated with other typical sports software functions.

The key is to find a league scheduling software that meets your needs today and that has a commitment behind it to steadily improve and stay current with today’s industry standards.

One way to do this, while not perfect, is to simply seek out the league scheduling software that has most recently been brought to market or has most recently been updated.

The more important way is to write out your “must have” criteria for league scheduling software and then to have all providers go on the record with how they can meet your requirements.

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Posted in How to Choose, Parents Win, Scheduling | No Comments »

Sports Scheduling Software – Like “Dirty Harry” said… do you feel lucky?

July 28th, 2010

Labels can deceive. There are pedestrian bridges over small creeks and then there is the Golden Gate Bridge; both called bridges but oh so very, very different.

If you choose your sports scheduling software based upon the label “sports scheduling software” and look no deeper we suggest that you might want to borrow Dirty Harry’s line from the famous movie scene and ask yourself if you feel lucky. Will you get the capabilities in sports scheduling software that you and your organization really need? Unless you are a very small organization, going by the label alone will almost certainly leave you so disappointed that you’ll likely need to bolt on a separate, costly and often difficult to use stand alone sports scheduling software.

With Bonzi you can get both the best sports software in the world, according to nearly everyone who has ever gotten a demo, AND you can get what is easily the most convenient and powerful sports scheduling software all nicely integrated and ready to roll… or you can risk being deeply disappointed. So, “Do You Feel Lucky”?

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Posted in How to Choose, Parents Win, Performance, Scheduling, Volunteers | No Comments »

Details on New Sports Scheduling Software from Bonzi

July 21st, 2010

As many of you know, we at Bonzi have been working on a  new online sports scheduling software enhancement to our core sports registration platform for the last few months.  This product is based upon our powerful sports scheduling software desktop application and gives you the same scheduling power online that it does on the desktop…only it’s easier, faster and offers more benefits:

  • Schedule games instantly!
  • Teams already in the system  automatically show up when you go to schedule games.
  • The scheduler actually does the schedule work for you, unlike most of your alternatives . . . it doesn’t just pair your games and leave you to assign the date, time and location.
  • All locations across schedules and between events will be managed for conflicts when games are created.
  • Easy drag and drop game edit features let’s you know exactly where you can schedule or move games.
  • Unschedule games for a location that’s rained out, and automatically re-schedule with one click.
  • Set team conflicts so teams don’t play at the same time and allow travel time for those teams between games.
  • Add home preference game sites for teams and times when they can or cannot play.
  • All games publish to your web site AND to your team web pages automatically.
  • Choose to allow your coaches to enter game scores OR you can enter game scores yourself.
  • Standings calculate in real-time as soon as the scores are entered.

The new scheduler is scheduled for BETA release the week of July 26, 2010.  More upgrades to this great new product are scheduled after its full release.

Our next newsletter will have a “sneak peek” video of the new online scheduler so you can see how it might work for your organization.

Are you ready to step-up to a truly modern sports scheduling software and leave the whip and buggy days behind? If so give Ricky Aker a call today and book your time for a demo: 503-620-6661 X224

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Posted in How to Choose, Scheduling, Support, Upgrades, Wins for Parents | No Comments »

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