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:
The urgency of a need is great. This can often be because there is great pain or discomfort with the status quo.
There are few or no alternatives to satisfactorily meet the need.
There is solid proof that if you act the need will be satisfactorily met.
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:
The urgency of a need is great. There is great pain or discomfort with the status quo in sports software.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
