Club Experience

RAN Sailing Association (RANSA)

Firstly it could be summed up as challenging to move a club from 100% manual membership to 100% digital and online membership management, but worth the effort with payback being almost immediate.

We had looked at SportsTG and decided their platform was far to clunky and had come to the independent conclusion from testing that the revSPORT platform was best suited to what we wanted to do, prior to Australian Sailing being involved. Partly due to their features and ease of use, both admin “back of house” and the website “front of house” for a club that has only 2 part time employees it has to be easy to use.

The service and support from revSPORT has been outstanding. If I have to post an enquiry/support ticket they respond promptly and fix the issue or point me in the right direction

The assistance of Chantal (Australian Sailing) to move the SportsTG content to the revSPORT web shell was a great help.

The data migration process was a bit painful as (and there are still issues) with the format/fields that AS requires to do the import and that we could not do the bulk import ourselves in the AS “version”. Our IT contractor had a much better handle on data management than AS did, but we got there eventually.

We are only using the revSPORT platform for membership management & payments at this stage. Bed this down with the part time employees and Xero before taking other payments through the web site. With various part time employees/contractors/volunteers this was decided as the safest option for the change. There had been some challenges with reconciliation of payment gateway subs (PIN fees), versus direct deposits etc. but this process was eventually sorted. Overall we collected money faster and have far more visibility as to who is financial. Improved cash flow. While we are currently showing 500+ members this included everyone we could find on our or AS records and were imported as a start to try to get people to pay/stay. We are now in the cull phase to get to the real number which will be about 100 less, but overall membership management and reporting is very good.

Emails generated by the system also very good and look much more professional than sent via Outlook.

Advice for other clubs. Garbage in garbage out. Take the time to know what you are looking to capture (additional field design) and what you are actually importing. It does not stop with the first import, but you have to revisit the database and this will probably take a year to get it right. Don’t go for the big bang with all bells and whistles capability with accepting online payments etc. unless you have the full time professional resources to manage and reconcile, walk before you can run.

Depending on your staff skills train and re-train how to use the system. The RANSA staff are not IT gurus so while the AS training and support was ok, it needs to be followed up a bit more with “forced” additional training sessions so they become self-sufficient and proficient faster. However overall they have found the system to be pretty easy to use once shown and/or given hands on practical training.

Bottom line, very glad we did it but it took some effort to get there, now to take it to the next level by entering additional member data to get better profile of our members.

Cam Wayland

Secretary – RAN Sailing Association

Darwin Sailing Club

The revSPORT system has proved to be a good tool for Darwin Sailing Club. It provides a means of keeping track of upcoming chargeable events and details of who is participating. Payment transaction fees are lower than the previous system and course participant fees payable to Australian Sailing are collected at the point of payment by the customer, rather than, in effect, being paid months in advance by DSC on our budgeted enrolments. 

The revSPORT system has some noted improvements, including:

• Easy to customise reports by event (although reporting has limitations)

• Email function allows easy communications with event entrants

• Convenient for people to be able to register and pay online

• Reasonably easy to add a new stand-alone event

• Entry/response opening date/time and closing dates/time functionality

• Date/time late entry function with an option for a late entry fee.

• “Extras” functions for entry – say extra dinner tickets, more t-shirts etc.

• Shop function – boat hire etc.

• Payment online with entry/enrolment can be made mandatory

As an early adopter of the revSPORT system there were challenges and the club has advised Australian Sailing of areas for improvement.

Communication about how the system worked (tailored for different staff roles), changes to how the system worked (when they have been made), and of the shortfalls in the backend of the system. Summary of main issues encountered:

• • Limited and not particularly role specific introduction to the revSPORT system

  • Changes to system without notice

  • System back end downfalls

The date facility does not work for “events” which take place over an extended time period, unless the event occurs on consecutive days e.g. a race series or Learn to Sail course that occurs weekly or similarly will show on the calendar as occurring on all the days between the first and last dates. This makes the calendar function a failure, at least within the context of most sailing club activities. Note: When/if this is resolved the calendar function is actually quite powerful, as it allows search by event type by DSC determined parameters. It also allows this calendar to be embedded in the DSC website.

Dealing with the “exceptions”, particularly transferring from one (paid) event/course to another can be administratively challenging and time absorbing.

Reporting across event and summarise multiple events.

revSport does not handle yacht race entry well. Either the entrant, or the sailing office and usually both, need to re-enter data that has been provided to the Club previously.

Take up of customers using the system. There are still a significant number of people who either encounter problems or just prefer DSC to process registrations and payments on their behalf. It’s a good system when customers are happy to ‘self-serve’ online, although you should be aware of the requirement to manually transfer funds across to your club; the process isn’t entirely automated end to end.

Generally a step in the right direction of improved (and continuing to improve) functionality and ease of use.

John Melenewycz

General Manager – The Darwin Sailing Club