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.
Tags: accomplishment, Bonzi sports software, Communication, youth sports software
Posted in Acknowlegement, Coaching, Communication, Developing Kids, Volunteers | No Comments »
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:
- Lowest overall cost
- Great personal support
- Easy to use but powerful
- No contracts
- 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 »
July 14th, 2010
Are you going up the sports team software escalator?
Believe it or not, most clubs, teams, leagues or other sports organizations are going up the sports team software escalator one way or the other. Here is what I mean…
Like some credit card companies, many sports team software companies offer you a “low introductory price” to make it easy to get started. Some even make it “free” to get started. But its not too long before you discover that you are on the sports team software cost escalator. The old saying is that if you toss a frog in boiling water he’ll jump out, but if you put him into a pot starting with cold water and gradually raise the temperature the frog will stay until he croaks. Sadly, that can happen to any of us with sports team software for sports registration, sports websites, and sports scheduling.
There are a number of ways that this can happen. The first is that they just tell you that your fee will be $2 year one, $5 year two and $8 year three for each registration. They may also tell you that your credit card fee will be 3% year one, 5% year two and 8% or more year three for each registration. The theory is that nobody will care on an individual basis and they might be right. The problem is that this kind of arrangement can suck a huge amount of money out of your organization and your players that you just didn’t need to spend on sports team software and that you could have spent instead on scholarships or some other worthwhile investment.
The second way that you can ride the sports team software escalator is by getting “nickeled and dimed” with cost for more storage, costs for more band width, costs to email as often as you need and costs to turn off the unrelenting ads to your organization. Finally, you may be going up the true cost escalator simply because you don’t have a way to do fund raising because the fine print gives the proceeds to your software provider and not your club so that they can support your “free” or low cost sports team software.
At Bonzi we promise that you’ll always enjoy the lowest overall cost, the best support, the easiest to use software, the most powerful and compatible software, unlimited storage and email, no contracts and your money in your bank account every day. At Bonzi sports team software you’ll never be on the sports team software escalator.
Tags: making decisions, sports registration, sports schedule software, Sports software, sports team software, sports websites
Posted in Communication, Cost of Free, Costs, How to Choose, Parents Win | No Comments »
July 13th, 2010
Team is a term that is thrown around so loosely that you’d think all you have to do to get a team together is to just say the word “team” and voila, you’d have a team… whatever that is.
When you search “team” on the www.amazon.com website in the books category you get approximately 172,000 results returned; obviously the world struggles with “team” otherwise why all the darn books?
So just what does put the team into sports team software? In my observation it’s when two conditions are met: 1) everyone has a shared goal that excites each and every person and 2) all proposed members of the team believe, to some degree, that achievement of that goal is possible … even if it’s not precisely probable.
What we’ve found is that if you got those two things going for you, you can skip all 172,000+ of the books, the seminars, and all the other whoo-haa about teams… because you will have a team. See, what we’ve found, and your mileage may vary, is that when you have a goal that everyone shares, is excited about it and believes that it is possible to achieve even if it might be hard work… then a team naturally and easily forms; that’s what puts the team in sports team software.
There is, of course, a bit more to the software part of the story. The one major threat to a team is a lack of communication. The Bonzi sports team software makes it a breeze to communicate with one or many teams, one or many team members and allows you to do so impromptu, automatically or both.
The bottom line is that as a leader it’s really you that put’s the “team” in sports team software. Yeah, Bonzi is here to help you keep the “team” in sports team software but only you can get it there to start.
Tags: Bonzi sports software, Communication, Sports software, sports team software, Youth Soccer Coaching
Posted in Acknowlegement, Coaching, Communication, Developing Kids, How to Choose, Motivation, Parents Win, Performance | No Comments »
July 9th, 2010
I’ve done it, maybe you’ve done it too; searched for something free on the internet. After all, isn’t that one of the foundations of the internet ethic, that good things can be had for free?
The puzzle is that there are some very good things on the internet that are truly free, such as sites like Wikipedia. But while there are some “free” things of value on the internet, in my observation, there are many, many cases where free turns out to be a sucker punch.
For example take the search term “free soccer software”, it’s searched for over 1,300 times per month on average last time I looked.
Let’s take the cotton candy metaphor for example, and let’s consider that sugar is to cotton candy as free is to soccer software. Cotton candy is almost pure sugar with a bit of color tossed in for interest. Free soccer software might be nominally free but actually offer little else of use and like cotton candy, after the initial thrill is gone you are left with at best little nutrition and possibly cavities. Here’s why…
Free does not get you these important things if you have a real need for soccer software… or any other kind of real sports software for that matter:
- Live, available, skilled and dedicated support; when you get into a ditch, you are truly stuck and may have just wasted a huge amount of time because you can’t get any help.
- Ease of use may be lacking because there is no team of dedicated developers keeping the soccer software code up-to-date and compatible to say nothing of easy to use from a non technical person’s point of view.
- Rich and necessary features – lousy features can usually only be tolerated by soccer software users who only have very, very limited needs. Even the smallest club… maybe particularly the smallest club needs the features they need because they can’t make up the difference with manpower.
- Registration; when money is involved and things go south you’ll need help… that is if free soccer software even have a real and reliable registration feature.
- Scheduling; I suspect that there are some free soccer software scheduling applications out there but when most of the paid soccer scheduling applications have serious limitation it seems to be a stretch of the imagination that a free application would reliably return a satisfactory result for the critical task of scheduling teams, venues, coaches and so on.
- Email; free soccer software without an automated email notification system is, in my opinion, practically worthless as you miss half the point of any sports software and that is to be able to efficiently communicate with the right sub-set of parents, coaches and team members about a specific issue, event or situation.
- Web pages; this seems to be what many really mean when they say free soccer software. The price you pay here is that first they’ll charge you if you need anything beyond a stupid set of minimums and you’ll have to pay if you don’t want them to advertise as they see fit to your visitors.
I’ll stop here but the list goes on and on and on. You get the idea. Free soccer software can easily end up wasting precious time, money and give you a major league case of indigestion and embarrassment if you are the one who innocently recommended going down this problem strewn path with the simple and honorable intent of saving a few bucks.
Bonzi sports software gives you everything you could ever want to support soccer and any other sport all on one ultra high quality and supported platform. The best thing is that Bonzi is the next best thing to free as it’s the lowest overall cost soccer software on the market and is viewed by its customers as far and away the best sports software available in the north american market today.
Tags: Bonzi sports software, Communication, league software reporting, making decisions, online registration, soccer software, Sports software, sports websites, Support
Posted in Communication, Cost of Free, Costs, Parents Win, Performance, Upgrades, Volunteers | No Comments »
July 7th, 2010
Then again, sometimes it does or at least seems like it “kills” you.
So what does this have to do with sports software, soccer software, football sports software, volleyball software and so on? At Bonzi sports software we’ve been tested over the last decade by clients who run some of the largest and most complex sports organizations in the country. We’ve been tested by volunteers and parents who are software experts. We’ve even been tested by very small clients. The win is that with each sport, each part of the country and each new test we feel like we get better and our sports registration, website and scheduling software gets better.
When you have it easy in your life you often have no real reason to grow, improve and test your limits. We like to say that our most demanding customers – some would say the biggest pain-in-the-neck customers – are our very best clients in terms of making us better. Why? Because they are brave enough to stand up for what they want and to communicate it to us.
Sports software that serves tens of thousands of people every hour of every day is complex stuff. Add to that this software must be constantly updated to stay aligned with new browsers, new operating systems, new requirements and innovations and you could go crazy just trying to figure out what to do next. That’s where our customers help us out.
In our observation when people share their concerns, desires, wants and needs with us they are doing a number of good things:
- We’ve learned that behind every concern, desire, want and need is a value of some sort. By expressing those concerns, desires, wants and needs we can get a better idea of what our customers values are. We are confident that if we the people of Bonzi and our sports software are aligned and stay aligned with our customers that we will be one of the fastest growing sports software companies in the world.
- We get a chance to find out if those concerns, desires, wants and needs are for action or if they are just blowing off a little steam and don’t actually want us to do anything or if they do want action. Nobody has enough money, not even Microsoft, to blindly respond to every request. Just simply listening to our clients view of sports software goes a very long way. What’s even better is when we just ask “what action would you like us to take”?
- We learned that customers who are willing to share their concerns, desires, wants and needs are usually not the kind of customer who abandons you every time a new shiny toy comes out from a competitor.
No, all this listening is not always fun… but it sure is productive. We love it when people say things like “Wow, you took care of that request fast – my old sports software provider basically charged us more, barely listened and never took any action to address our concerns.”
So what doesn’t kill us does seem to make us stronger. Got a concern, complaint or a suggestion; please let us know. After all, if it doesn’t kill us it will make us better.
Tags: accomplishment, making decisions, software soccer, Sports software, sports websites
Posted in Communication, How to Choose, Motivation, Parents Win, Performance, Support, Volunteers, Wins for Parents | No Comments »
July 3rd, 2010
Bonzi is nothing like my old sports registration and website company; at Bonzi sports software we’ve heard this a million times… or so it seems.
Sure people love the support, the fact that it’s the lowest overall cost, that its so amazingly easy to use and still powerful, that there are no contract and that Bonzi puts your money in your bank account FAST.
The funny thing is that while they love all of that there is still just something that they can’t quite put their fingers on or so they say. We think we know what it is.
Many companies tout “its our people”; I’m sure some are sincere and some are just posturing because it’s the “right thing to say”. At Bonzi it’s a bit different because we have a highly refined process that lets the right people in the right job with the right tools excel for our customers. Here’s how…
At the level of the organization:
- We make sure that everyone knows the company values, what’s expected and what the consequences are if the expectations are not met.
- We provide the right tools and the right resources i.e. fast computers with the right software tools or headsets for the support staff.
- Everyone is clear on what they are accountable for and what the incentives are for meeting those accountabilities
At the level of the individual:
- We go to great lengths including using well validated survey tools to make sure we hire people who are both fairly natural and skilled at doing what they job requires.
- We benchmark the job and profile the individual’s behavioral capabilities and interview for the detail to assure that those capabilities have been demonstrated prior to joining the Bonzi team.
- Finally we survey and interview to be sure that our team members have the right level of motivation, willingness and urgency to work in a highly customer oriented business
When our customers describe the difference this makes at Bonzi they usually have a hard time putting it into words… but they know things are different at Bonzi no matter which sports registration, scheduling and website company they used to use. My favorite comment was when someone simply said: I get exactly what I need in the way I need it from Bonzi in a way that feels so effortless that its easy to take them for granted. This same individual also said that he’d changed organizations and the new organization used a different sports registration, scheduling and website provider which led him to make this comment “For me Bonzi sports software was a bit like air, I didn’t appreciate it until it was gone… and then when I didn’t have it I desperately wanted and needed it back”.
Given enough time and budget and it is possible to build reasonably good software. We know that our enduring differentiation has as it’s foundation both the people process we use and the people it attracts to our very closely knit team of committed sports software professionals.
So when you hear someone say that they just can’t put their finger on what’s different about Bonzi sports software, now you’ll know why.
Posted in Communication, Costs, How to Choose, Parents Win, Performance, Reporting, Scheduling, Support, Wins for Parents | No Comments »
June 30th, 2010
One of the most startling things my father ever said to me as I was growing up was “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach”. Being very visual this statement hit me with both the “Yuck” factor of the image and the conviction that the metaphor was spot on in the situation at hand in my life.
24 – 7 – 365; All any of us has is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days in a year. Exactly how many years each of us might be lucky enough to get persists as one of the primary questions in any life. Given all this we can only accomplish so much with our precious time. If this is so then why are we so loath to write down and commit to goals… that are somewhat realistic AND that we reasonably might have the resources to accomplish?
The power of “and”. Last summer I sent my then 16 year old son on a three week Outward Bound adventure. We were warned that the adventure would entail carrying a heavy pack for 10 + miles each day over rugged terrain. To get him ready I thought of all sorts of complicated exercise routines but in the end decided to opt for something simple that had a high likelihood of actually happening often enough that the end result would be a level of conditioning that would allow my moderately sedentary son to have a good time and not hate me the rest of his long life. At first I was just going to have him walk home from school each day; nice, simple and likely to happen. The magic was the power of the “and”. Each day he took a pack with him to school and each week we added 5 pounds to the pack so by the last week prior to his Outward Bound departure he was carrying 60 lbs for 2.5 miles each day.
So why am I telling you this? Because for once in my life I got real about the: 1) goal, 2) resources and 3) time that we had to accomplish something. Had I made this complex my son would not have been prepared for what turned out to often be 10+ hours of walking each day and often more than 10 miles over steep terrain including snow. As it turned out my son was by far the most physically fit kid on the trip and as a result he had a truly life changing experience.
The key was two-fold; first we got real and clear about what our goal, resources and time was for the mission at hand, second we kept it simple enough to get done but not so simple that it didn’t meet the need; we included the powerful “and” of both the walking and the gradually increasing weight in the pack.
Too often I fail and see others fail when we don’t get real with people in sports and recognize the reality of our goals, resources and time… and as a result we don’t accomplish anything other than creating chaos and frustration. Workout routines that are simple and have limited objectives can often achieve most of our goals for a sport while staying within our resource limits and the little time most modern schedules can allocate.
At Bonzi sports software we too are faced with being real about our goals, resources and time. As one of the fastest growing sports software companies in the world (according to our consultant) our growth consumes resources and time along with our commitment to world-class support, providing the best sports registration software, sports scheduling software, team website software enabled with an easy-to-use content manager all in a no contract customer relationship. All this comes back to our goal; a great and frustration free experience for our dedicated volunteers, administrators and parents associated with sports such as soccer, football, basketball, baseball, softball, lacrosse, hockey , little league and volley ball.
We have found that if we keep it simple and real we can leverage the power of the “and” thereby both delivering a great experience every day for our clients and growing faster than any of our competitors without losing clients.
So what do you think? Are we achieving our objective?
Tags: accomplishment, Bonzi sports software, leadership, Little league baseball, sports registration, sports schedule software, sports team software, sports websites, team websites, youth sports software
Posted in Acknowlegement, Coaching, Communication, Developing Kids, Motivation, Parents Win, Performance, Volunteers | No Comments »
June 29th, 2010
My 17 year old son is cleaning out his bedroom to prepare for a busy summer and to be ready to hit the ground running for his senior year in high school. This whole process reminded me of the new movie Toy Story 3 where the boy is getting ready to move away from home and go to college. My son and the Toy Story 3 boy were both at the beginning of transitions and both were packing up the remnants of the past in preparation for the future.
Having seen the Toy Story 3 movie tuned my awareness up for boxes marked “Store in Attic” and “Give Away”. I noticed my son too had a box marked “Store in Attic”… I just had to peak to see what prize had escaped the trip to Goodwill and was getting stored for a shot at another day. To my surprise a significant portion of those things being saved for the future was his collection of “participation” trophy’s from kindergarten on. Alas, my son has never been nor really wanted to be a competitor; he was just out to have fun and be part of the team. Still the recognition represented by the trophy must have meant something to him.
In the science of motivation we know that recognition is a powerful motivator for people to try harder, work harder and to have vastly more persistence than is likely without recognition. For many a kid the recognition that comes from a coach, other parents and a $2 trophy is all the recognition that they are likely to get in life. To my way of thinking this is one of the foundational values that make youth sports so very, very important in our culture regardless which game is played.
At Bonzi sports software we support the concept of recognition a couple of important ways. First we know that having your picture on a sports website or a video on your sports website is a powerful motivator. To support that Bonzi sports software allows for unlimited space so that coaches and volunteers can post all the pictures they want without being asked to pay more. We also make sure that we keep the cost of registration down without asking the sports club or league to compromise on what they get from the software. Finally, Bonzi sports software is unique in all sports software in that we have a content management system that makes it easy and fast for a volunteer or administrator to quickly post and title new photos or videos.
We know that appropriate recognition drives both effort and self-esteem in kids. When kids know how to go beyond their initial limits and the develop great self-esteem we know that our world will be a better place for everybody.
Tags: accomplishment, Communication, leadership, making decisions, Sports software, Youth Soccer Coaching
Posted in Acknowlegement, Coaching, Communication, Developing Kids, Motivation, Parents Win | No Comments »
June 25th, 2010
For many who have worked around the quest to improve performance in baseball, football, lacrosse, basketball… or any other endeavor in life we know that often the foundation of performance amounts to the combination of willing and able.
Simply put is the person performing both willing to perform and able?
The Heath brothers, Chip and Dan, in their amazing book “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard” suggest that change, in this example changing from good performance to great performance, may require two critical things; clarity of what is required to make the change i.e. more exercise or better nutrition… and a specific and simple action that can be taken to get there.
In our experiences with performance it also helps to have both clarity of an inspiring win in personal terms and an internally or externally imposed “what by when” or “butt on the line” to take a specific action by a specific date.
Also from our experience we’ve learned that often the first step towards performance is a “what by when” for execution of an activity or more specifically an outcome i.e. run five miles. The next step and a step often regarded as an order of magnitude more difficult is to sign-up for an outcome instead of just an activity i.e. run five miles in under 30 minutes. I like to say that the professionals sign-up for outcomes while the amateurs sign-up for activities.
In the sports software or sports registration and scheduling software market Bonzi is well known as the company and I do mean the company that signs-up to lead and perform on all fronts; Bonzi signs-up for outcomes for our clients vs. just going through the activities. So what do I mean? In the following categories:
- league scheduling software
- league management software
- sports tournament software
- sports website software
- sports registration software
- online league software
with versions for every sport played on this earth (or at least so it seems)… Bonzi sports software has signed-up to meet or exceed our users expectations on the following fronts just to name a few:
- Free, ultra high quality, friendly and available support – even one-on-one training.
- Super easy to use yet easily the most powerful application on the market… and the only sports software that has a fully functioning content manager for website creation and management.
- Lowest overall cost and no forced advertising on your site and in your emails.
- Your money in your bank account every day.
- No contracts, no surprises and no games to have to explain to your board of directors after they’ve made the initial authorization – you’ll never feel like a dummy with Bonzi
- And about a million other goodies we know you’ll love like iPhone access and broader browser support than any other.
So we started this post speaking about “willing and able”. At Bonzi our performance rests on our being willing and able to give you the best sports software money can buy at the lowest cost… all so we can support your willing and able to perform in the sport you love.
Tags: accomplishment, Bonzi sports software, leadership, league software reporting, Little league baseball, making decisions, online registration, Performance, Sports software, sports team software, sports websites, team sports, team sports software, youth sports software
Posted in Communication, Costs, Motivation, Reporting, Scheduling, Support, Volunteers, Wins for Parents | No Comments »
