Help, my league software has my data locked up!

May 27th, 2010

To me reporting is like air; you don’t miss  it or some might say understand it, until you don’t have it. Reporting is just not a big deal in most people’s lives so it’s hard to know what you really need from your league software or sports software… until you realize you don’t have what you need.  You went to all the trouble to setup a sports software system for your organization.  The data is in there.  But how on earth do you get it out?  When you need that report few things are more frustrating than finding you can’t get to the information you need through the system reports  or need to” jump through hoops to get to it”. You call your league software or sports software provider and ask for the information but it never shows up . . . ever.

This is so frustrating!

You want to print reports, but need to choose the data and information that appears on the reports so that the reports will accomplish your objectives.  It would probably also help if once you got a report the way you wanted it… you could save it to use over and over again!  Once you’ve generated your report, you of course want to be able to view it, print it, email it or download the report to your computer so you can store it for later if need b.

TRUE STORY

Roxanne was delighted by the number of reports and the report wizards he found in her Bonzi league software.  In the her old league software it would take her hours now took a few clicks of the mouse.  Roxanne liked the report wizard in the system too, but she also wanted to make her own fully customized reports, so she used the download feature to save his information to Excel where she customized the reports to her exact needs.

Most league software providers don’t want to tell you about their reporting.  A solid league software product will let you make your own reports ; you should be able to download your data too.  Finally Roxanne found that where her old league software provider was never available to help her when she needed help with special reports that Bonzi league software picked up the phone on the second or third ring and instantly gave her the help she sought. No wonder Bonzi league software doesn’t need a contract to keep their customers coming back year after year.

What has your experience been with league software and data reporting capabilities?

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

Sports Scheduling Software for Very Large Organizations

May 21st, 2010

When your sports schedule software can’t match venue with team with coach with hour with day you have a mess that will likely only be addressed by a sports schedule software specifically designed to handle your size and complexity and beyond. It only takes a little bit of growth to completely defeat your ability to efficiently and effectively let everyone know where and when their game is happening.

You’re a large sports organization with over 3,000 players and many types of programs.  Maybe the software you’re using just can’t keep up in general but you are struggling through anyway.  You don’t have the features you want in your software, your staff complains about wasting time, and the vendor won’t answer the phone for support and email support is slow at best. Despite all that pain you can still keep the game going.

There is one area that when your sports software fails you are likely forced to find an alternative and find it fast; sports schedule software.

You want a software product that can keep up with your organization and the different needs you have.  It has to support registration for your programs, handle thousands of transactions and allow a wide variety of staff members to work on the system at the same time without bogging down. Above all that, however, it must handle your schedule demands.

TRUE STORY

Dana’s sports club serves more than 5,000 players.  They offer programs for youth and adults.  They register online for camps and clinics, referees, leagues, competitive programs, try outs, tournaments and have fundraisers.  .  . all using Bonzi’s sports management software and sports scheduling software.  There’s no slow down due to volume and the system has all the features a large organization needs to exceed everyone’s expectations.  When Dana has a special need, she picks up the phone and instantly talks to an experienced Bonzi staff member about how to quickly and easily address the issue.  Her requests for enhancements are added to the software, sometimes within a few days depending on her needs.

Above all Dana knows that she simply can’t outgrow Bonzi’s ability to quickly and effectively manage her incredibly complicated scheduling requirements. Since adopting Bonzi Dana sleeps well at night.

Any software provider should be able to explain how they would serve a large club and especially address how the sports scheduling aspect of their software can handle steady growth especially for a very large organization.  They should have worked with large organizations before similar to yours and should demonstrate they understand the special circumstances you face managing a very large organization.

Bonzi software is the only sports software in the market specially designed to handle the needs, schedules and volume of large and very large sports organizations.  It provides the features and customer support that larger organizations need to stay on top of their workload.

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Posted in Communication, How to Choose, Scheduling | No Comments »

League Software

May 17th, 2010

League software;  just exactly does that mean?

If you are a bowling league, baseball league, softball league, basketball league etc. does that mean it’s for you?

According to www.dictionary.com a league is…

league

1 [leeg]  Show IPA noun, verb,leagued,lea·guing.

–noun

1.

a covenant or compact made between persons, parties, states, etc., for the promotion or maintenance of common interests or for mutual assistance or service.
2.

the aggregation of persons, parties, states, etc., associated in such a covenant or compact; confederacy.
3.

an association of individuals having a common goal.
4.

a group of athletic teams organized to promote mutual interests and to compete chiefly among themselves: a bowling league.
5.

6.

group; class; category: As a pianist he just simply isn’t in your league.
–verb (used with object), verb (used without object)

7.

to unite in a league; combine.

—Idiom

8.

in league, working together, often secretly or for a harmful purpose; united.

So, of course,  league software must be designed to support a league.

Depending on how they define it there are probably at least 40 different companies that suggest that they provide “league software”. All have nice web sites and some have enticing offers with a few even suggesting that their software is FREE.

If your time has come and its either time for you to move from manual management of your league to online league software or you are already on a league software and you need to move to another to meet the needs of your league then you know that you have a huge job ahead of you. That is unless you get a little help.

Bonzi has something called the Bonzi Challenge. This is a challenge that says that Bonzi is so confident in what we offer that if you can find a better supported league software package, a lower cost league software package, easier to use and more powerful league software, a league software that requires no contracts, and a league software that puts your money in your bank account every time you receive a registration then Bonzi will give you use of their league software FREE, no strings attached, for one full year. You can check out the Bonzi Challenge HERE: http://www.bonzicentral.com/bonzichallenge

The Bonzi Challenge helps you sort out the market for league software by showing you most of the players in the market and it gives you all the questions our customers have told us are the most important to ask when making that all important league software choice. There is even a calculator to help you figure out what the real and total cost of one league software option vs. another might be.

We believe that after you take the Bonzi Challenge that you will know two things for sure; 1) what league software should be and 2) what questions to ask to make the best choice for you and your league.

If you’ve used the Bonzi Challenge tools, what did you think?

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Posted in Cost of Free, Costs, How to Choose, Parents Win, Scheduling | No Comments »

A Key Question in Coaching

May 12th, 2010

I have a dear friend who hit the workplace lottery big and got to retire early; lucky guy (actually he had great ideas, worked very hard at something he loved and had a bit of luck too).

He took the passion that made him a successful business person to being a volunteer coach. By all accounts he was overall a very good coach with one exception; he yelled to the point of almost berating the kids. While that level of passion might have been OK in the corporate world (even there I have my doubts) it seemed to me to really take the shine off of his otherwise superb coaching contribution.

In sports and in life I’ve discovered powerful question that I usually reserve for my own behavior but occasionally have the guts to trot out when I hear a coach going beyond the pale with kids… or even other adults. That question is “What were you trying to accomplish with what you said” followed by “If it was to motivate and inspire you might want to consider taking another tact”.

Soccer, baseball, football, lacrosse, swimming and any other sport you can name seems to get there share of parents and coaches that somehow think that yelling derogatory and at times obscene things at kids has a prayer of accomplishing some positive result. Yes, you might get a change in behavior but often at huge cost… a cost that to me if rarely worth it.

Being passionate and giving instruction is yelled is not what I’m talking about. Done right that often does inspire a kid and helps them be there best. The positive expectation that is shown with that kind of behavior has been shown to create an emotional safety zone for kids AND pushes them to more fully realize there potential.

At Bonzi sports software we have an amazing customer support staff and we are deeply grateful for it. They treat each person who calls with respect, grace and infinite patience. There folks have to simultaneously seem as though they have nothing else in the world to do other than help a volunteer who has never used anything more complicated than a typewriter 40 years ago in college get a sports registration system and a team website up and running to the satisfaction of some fairly sophisticated kids, parents and fellow volunteers… while getting the support delivered quickly enough to serve numerous clients each day.

These people on the Bonzi sports software staff are dedicated and show each day, I’m convinced, to do there level best. By the same token, I believe, that kids show up on the field each day to do there level best… given there overall circumstances. I cannot imagine anyone in there right mind yelling derogatory comments at the Bonzi sports software staff and expecting that it would improve their performance any more than I can imagine yelling at another person, adult or kid, in a derogatory fashion and expecting a positive result.

The key is to know that, from my perspective, everybody gets out of bed in the morning with serious intent to do their best given their circumstances. Those circumstances can be lots of negative self-talk about their ability to perform, a hurting knee, having had a big fight with a parent, or any other of ten million possible things that could take a person off track from delivering their best performance.

I’ll always be grateful to those coaches who had ultra high positive expectations for me when I played sports and would never accept my excuses for doing anything but my best. The fact that it was delivered in a positive almost demanding fashion did not demean me but rather showed me that they could see what I could become and had faith that together we could get there.

If you find your passion taking you to the dark side a bit for whatever reason consider giving that passion a twist towards positive expectation instead. After all, if you yelled at your co-workers I doubt that you would expect there performance to increase would you? The key question for me is “What was I trying to accomplish with what I said” . If what is said in any way belittles a person you might want to consider a different tact.

What has your experience been getting kids or adults to go beyond what they thought possible on the field?

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Posted in Acknowlegement, Coaching, Communication, Developing Kids, Motivation, Parents Win | No Comments »

Three types of complaints; recognize them to stay sane

May 4th, 2010

If you are a leader of any kind in sport clubs, leagues, or teams you likely run into complaints aplenty.

That these complaints happen at all is enough to put you on the “Tums of the month club” auto shipping programs. Wouldn’t it help if you had a way to quickly discern which complaints you needed to pay attention to and which you didn’t?

Our observation is that all complaints fall into one of three categories:

  1. Recreational complaints – some people grew up in a world that used complaining as a means of bonding with others or just having fun – these usually don’t mean a thing and require no action.
  2. Expressive complaints – read that “letting off steam”. There is a variance between the person’s values and what is happening but not so much that they are willing to take any action. While these don’t require action they are a source of insight into what those in your organization value and where you might want to consider making changes or improving your communication.
  3. Complaints for action – here there is enough variance between the person’s values and what is happening that they are likely to either leave the group or press you, in time, sufficient to drive change.

In our experience most complaints fall into category #1 and #2 and are just part of the unique culture of your group or organization. The magic is noticing #3 before it is too late. This is harder than it looks in our experience. One way to test is to simply ask:

  • What action do they want to have happen
  • What action are they willing to take

If they can’t be specific about what they want to have happen or they are not willing to take any action (sometimes requiring your help) then it may not be a category #3 complaint and just being heard is enough to put the issue to bed.

Discerning between these categories is critical to a company like Bonzi sports software where the core of our brand promise to our customers and prospects is customer service aka resolution of complaints, concerns and issues as well as helping our customers have an easy and smooth experience setting up and using sports software.

Often one of our deeply experienced customer support people will have to sort through several issues in one call and at least one or more issues will fall into each of the three categories above. Our experience is that many of our competitors actually want to invalidate their customers concerns or otherwise tell them that they are wrong or don’t know what they’re talking about. At Bonzi sports software our customer support people are tasked with just one primary rule of the road; help our customers and prospects be successful and make it a friendly, happy, smooth experience where the customer doesn’t have to wait to get what they want.

What have your experiences been with complaints of parents, kids, or other leaders; do these three categories line up with what you’ve observed or have you noticed other variation we might have missed?

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A Key To Easy Coach Communication

April 22nd, 2010
Most coaches have absolutely the best intent when it comes to team communication.

The challenge is even the best intent means little if time is short and the proper tools aren’t available to quickly get all the necessary communications out.

Here is how you might describe the perfect scenario:

After teams are rostered (players and coaches are assigned to the team), the team is activated on the web site.  Instantly Emails are automatically generated to the parents telling them their team roster has been finalized, coaches have been assigned, and they can log onto the member account and view the team web site.  The coach has already posted all of the necessary information on the site. Parents, kids and coach now all have one place to get all the necessary information 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

All of the above only occurs in one sports software package on the market today as a part of the standard software.
Sometimes you can purchase it separately, but it’s  not “linked” to the club or league’s “system” making for a disjointed and cumbersome system – not what you want if easy and effective communications are your goal.

Bonzi sports software is the only provider that offers the team web sites function included with its sports management software.

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Posted in Coaching, Communication, Parents Win | No Comments »

Sports Scheduling Software; What Late Adopters Want

February 18th, 2010

Most groups who decide to use Bonzi sports software come to us after having had a bad experience with one of our competitors. Some, however, are trying out online sports scheduling software for the first time. When someone is adopting online sports scheduling software in 2010 or ten years after such software has been available and reasonably usable industry experts refer to those folks as “Late Adopters”.

Why should you care? The only reason to care is that “late adopters” tend to be the most difficult of all market segments to please and are therefore a good test of the true quality of a online sports scheduling software or registration platform.

Here is what most “late adopters” demand by category:

  1. Deciding to decide: late adopters wait until prices come down and the service is great and the sports scheduling software has matured to the point of truly being easy to use.
  2. Weighing Information about options: they only want the best service, support, most advanced sports scheduling and registration software at the very lowest price with no compromises.
  3. Trial: at this point in the sports scheduling and registration software business you can assume that any problem can be fixed; the BIG question is how easily and how pleasantly can it be fixed?
  4. Implementing: Will they get me up easily and quickly?

All that makes sense for a “late adopter” in my book; if you’ve waited all this time why not go for the gold as your payoff for waiting and putting up with just paper, pen and Excel.

Are you a “late adopter”? If you have not yet started using sports scheduling and registration software for your team, club or league we’d like to hear from you; you can just post a comment here on this blog and we’ll share it for all to see in the hopes that your thoughts can help somebody else make a better decision.

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