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.
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”?
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
Why Isn’t Sports Scheduling Software All The Same?
The short answer is because of vision, intention, complexity and skill.
Most sports scheduling software is built with some basic scheduling code that could be used to allocate almost any resource. Many things that must be scheduled are not particularly dynamic in terms of the range that they need to serve. For example, you have a shop floor with 16 people and 8 machines over three shifts. Sure, you may grow, but due to certain logical constraints you’re not likely to grow to 1,000 people and 500 machines. If your sports scheduling software provider started with that kind of software then your limits will likely reflect that and be fairly low. This is all ok for many situations because this relatively low limit fits perfectly with the limited perspective and vision of the provider; they just wanted to schedule for a small league with just a few venues.
Intention and vision are related here. What I can see in my mind’s eye is my vision. My intention by contrast can simply be that I intend for my sports scheduling software to serve unlimited resources in an unlimited fashion – this is what Bonzi sports scheduling software is intended to do.
So maybe I have both the vision and intention to deliver an unlimited capacity to my sports scheduling software. When I get into what I don’t know, I don’t know about making sports scheduling software “unlimited”. I’ll likely find that the level of complexity has gone up exponentially – oh my aching head. Here is where my intention runs headlong into complexity and that begs the question of skill.
Do I have the skills to bring sports scheduling software, that aligns with my intention sufficiently, that I can overcome the exponential increase in complexity driven by my vision? Here in lies the rub; most sports scheduling software doesn’t really have that level of technical skill, the resource budget in time, money and the deep driving commitment to go the distance to produce truly unlimited sports scheduling software is lacking.
There are only a precious few sports software companies like Bonzi that can easily handle a sports organization with over one million members… most sports software is designed to handle very small organizations. Certainly they can handle a huge number of registrations and can build lots of websites and send lots of emails and yes, the larger the organization the more problematic all that becomes if your sports software was not designed from the ground up for this type of duty. All that aside the place sports software companies truly run out of gas is when it comes to the rather low limits on their sports scheduling software.
Should you hit that limit you have only two choices; find another sports software platform that truly can handle it all today (and in the future) or decide that you’ll just tolerate it and see if you can find a work around. Many try the work-around approach until the day comes that the approach makes a total mess of a tournament where hundreds or thousands of people find that their kids have just shown up at a venue and the game can’t go on because of the cheesy sports scheduling software and it’s limits.
Keep your eye peeled for the new release of Bonzi sports scheduling software. Like the rest of the software at Bonzi, we are always improving and this new sports scheduling software will truly lead the entire industry in terms of ease-of-use, capability and power.
If you’d like to schedule a demo just call Ricky Aker at 503-620-6661 X224 and let him know you are ready for a look at the new Bonzi sports scheduling software.
The scene in Crocodile Dundee is famous… three punks threaten with a small knife and expect Crocodile Dundee to hand over his wallet. Dundee’s date suggests he give the punks the wallet because they have a “knife”. Dundee counters saying “that’s not a knife, this is a knife” as he draws a huge knife from his belt. So what’s that go to do with sports schedule software?
Almost everyone claims to have “sports schedule software” but often it seems that this claim is either in name only or just for those with fairly modest demands. Before I go on let’s get a peek at the clip from the wonderful movie “Crocodile Dundee”:
Real sports schedule software in our book, like many of the goodies that Bonzi sports software offers, is unlimited. If you look beyond the label of “sports schedule software” you may find that what others in the sports software industry call sports schedule software is akin to what the punk in the video clip above calls a “knife”. We’d like to suggest that the Bonzi sports schedule software is like Crocodile Dundee’s knife and the rest of the industry is running around sporting the kind of sports schedule software akin to the punk’s “knife”.
Are you really confident that for your club, today and tomorrow, your current sports schedule software can really handle the job without forcing compromises and artificial limits? Maybe you already know the answer, and the answer is that you know what you have today can’t perform so you’ve gone to a separate package to get the job done. Either way we suspect you’ll love and enjoy the typical Bonzi ease-of-use and the typical Bonzi power in our version of sports schedule software integrated with our sports registration, team websites all-in-one sports software.
It is a shame that not all sports scheduling software is created equal, but the fact is that some are better than others. In this critical area we’d like to ask you to give Ricky Aker a call and see for yourself just how different the Bonzi sports scheduling software really is from the rest of the pack. Ricky may be reached at 503-620-6661 X224
New League Software; bet you haven’t heard those words said of late… possibly never.
Here is how the league software or sports software business works for most players involved:
Decide you want to get into the sports software or league software business; how hard could it be?
Buy or build a platform that covers the basics of sports registration, sports scheduling, team websites and email communications.
Begin to discover that this business is not nearly as easy nor as lucrative as you thought… but you’re now committed.
Begin to discover that your sports software or league software coding has some major problems in terms of it’s design or architecture; it’s really hard to enhance while keeping both the speed and ease-of-use high.
Realize that even the modest level of growth you are seeing is consuming all your cash and you can’t cover the support your users expect, keeping the software current and doing the marketing you must do to grow with the capital you have and the super skinny profits the business produces.
Buff up your balance sheet and seek an investment.
Get the investment.
Discover that your investors DEMAND both growth and profits
Spend most of the money they gave you on various forms of expensive marketing, like huge trade show booths and banner ads that don’t turn out to produce new enrollments – don’t spend any of it producing new league software like you had intended.
Raise the registration fees north of $5 per registration, up your credit card fees, hold on to the club’s money as long as you can to cover your cash flow issues, and start running ads on your users web sites and emails.
Only do the upgrades to the sports software or league software that you absolutely must to keep it running because you simply don’t have the cash to do anything else.
Begin to lose clubs, leagues and sports organizations because they don’t like your high registration cost, high credit card fees, you holding onto their money too long and the fact that your software is slowing down, is getting harder to use and they never get the upgrades you keep promising… and that it is nearly impossible to get support unless you pay a stiff fee.
You start requiring multi-year contracts with automatic renewals because you know that once users get past your marketing hoo haw and get a nose full of the reality of your real offer that they will leave at the first chance.
Your investors are really pushing you now so you have to raise your rates again, cut your investment in support and just keep the software limping along.
By now it might have been years since you were able to communicate to your users that you really did have “New League Software” to help them do their job easier, faster, smarter and with less cost.
By now you as the end user of the software provided by all this nonsense are at your peak of frustration.
By now the idea of getting into the league software or sports software business seems like a very bad idea for all concerned.
I think you get the picture; the sports software or league software business is TOUGH unless you do it just right.
Bonzi took a very different approach:
No debt to anyone
Lowest overall cost in the sports software or league software business
Famous for fast, free, friendly and unlimited support; even one-on-one training to get you going and keep you going
The software is being constantly upgraded and improved; the latest addition is a best-in-class content management system to allow anyone to build and maintain a website just like the professionals do
No contracts, no surprises, no gotchas
Your money goes directly into your bank account and Bonzi never holds on to it
Client requests for upgrades and new capabilities are understood and scheduled… and completed rapidly – we listen to our users
Our software design is state-of-the art so it is easy and economical to keep upgrading without losing speed or compromising capability and ease-of-use
Clients stay – we have never had a customer willingly leave
New league software is something you could hear every day at Bonzi and it would be true; the software is improved by a large staff of dedicated developers daily. We aren’t sure, but we doubt that any other sports software or league software company can say that today.
Which description above sounds like your league software provider? If you are ready to see just how good it can be give Bonzi’s Ricky Aker a call at 503-620-6661 X224 and ask for a demo; you’ll be amazed by what you see and hear about what you’ve been missing with your current league software.
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.
Parents are the key enabler to kids regular participation in any sport such as soccer, football, baseball, lacrosse, etc.
Kids can’t pay the fee’s, arrange the transportation, juggle the competing demands of a family’s schedule and all the other things that have to come together for a kid to participate in a sport.
Anymore it seems more and more unusual that only one parent in a two parent household can stay home and stay on top of all the logistics to make it happen. in many and maybe most families both parents work and depending on the size of the city or the nature of the work both parents are lucky to get home by dinner time let alone time to get a child a snack, make sure they have everything they need and get them off to practice or a game.
Today it seems that there are more than a few single parent households where the work must come first because it is the only source of income and there is no easy safety net if traffic is bad one day or the boss insists on work into the evening on the day of the big game or the crucial practice (aren’t they all?).
Despite all these challenges parents do their level best, in my observation, to do what it takes to get and keep their kids in sports simply because it is so central to a happy, healthy and well adjusted upbringing in this world. Ask many adults what their fondest memories of growing up were and I’ll bet a role in sports is one of the top three of the fondest memories.
So what’s the point? The point is that we all benefit from happy, healthy and well adjusted kids no matter our age or circumstances. These kids are our nations and the worlds future. This blog post is simply a plea for us all to look around and pitch in when we can to help each other get as many kids into sports as possible. I can’t do anything significant about the national debt, terrorists, or the price of beans in Beirut… but I can keep my eyes open and be sensitive enough to volunteer to provide a ride, give a word of encouragement, or volunteer my logistical support to help out a coach so that the most kids possible get to participate.
Bonzi sports software’s role is simple; we make it easy, fun and very, very affordable. We know that the harder it gets for parents and all the other caring folks who selflessly give to support kids participation the fewer kids get to play. Bonzi sports software can only make the sports registration, scheduling, coach background checking, rostering, and websites easy, fun and affordable… but we think that’s a lot. Beyond that it’s the coaches, volunteers and those dedicated parents who put their plans in second place in favor of the future of their kids.
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?
Sports Software, league software, youth sports software… whatever you call it doesn’t matter as much as what your perspective is when you think of it. What do I mean?
Sports software (or whatever you wish to call it) and it’s impact on your life differs by the job or role you have when you encounter it. Your role gives you certain experiences and experiences give you a unique set of distinctions… meaning you can see things that others can’t. No kidding.
For example, a referee see’s a sports activity with one set of eyes while a participant see’s it with another set of eyes and an observer/fan see’s it with yet another set of eyes. No perspective is wrong… they’re just different.
If you have never used sports software then at first glance they all look about the same… therein lies some danger that you might make a choice based upon limited distinctions and your development of distinctions might come from having a lousy first experience using sports software, league software and youth sports software. This can be especially painful if you get signed up for a multi-year contract that locks you in because you were told that “everybody” requires a multi-year contract.
If you have used sports software then you have developed some distinctions related to how you interacted with that software and the comments you heard from others. The painful thing is that it is all to easy to either have your contract with your current provider “auto” extend for a year or two… the details around this are usually in the fine print of your contract, or jump from a bad experience with your current provider to another equally difficult experience with a new provider.
Finally, it often happens that the sports software you are using may be OK for a volunteer who just does rostering or registration but a nightmare for your coaches, the person who manages the team web site or the person who is responsible for generating reports each week. The bottom line is that it is very difficult to gain enough sports software distinctions fast enough for any one person to understand all of the questions to ask to make sure that you and your organization get the best sports software for the unique needs of your club, league or organization.
Bonzi sports software knows this oh so well because our friendly team of sports software support experts speak with both Bonzi sports software users and people who are frustrated with other brands of sports software not just daily but hourly. From that experience has come something called the Bonzi sports software “Best Choice Tool Kit” and the “Bonzi Challenge”. Essentially Bonzi sports software knows that if you ask all the right questions that you’ll be in a great position to make the best choice for your and your organization. Bonzi also has good reason to believe that if you do ask all the right questions that you’ll quickly see that Bonzi, according to our customers, has what most clubs, leagues and organizations feel is the best sports software for most them.
Are you curious? Is your sports software contract going to expire soon? Are you doing it all with Excel and sheer determination? If so then you might want to check out our free, fair, and easy to use tools to help you and your organization make the best sports software choice for you and your club, league or organization by going here: http://www.bonzicentral.com/bonzichallenge
