CASE STUDY
Plano Sports Authority
What is the Plano Sports Authority?
A highly successful, high growth, extraordinarily well managed, non-profit founded in 1970. This is an organization formed to serve its community. And they take their service ethic very, very seriously. Board members are all non-paid. And some work full-time to advance the goals and programming of the organization.
PSA is the oldest member of the Plano Chamber of Commerce and employs 200 full and part-time employees. They employ 1,500 contract officials and manage a dedicated team of volunteers numbering over 5,000.
In the summer, during camp season, with over 200,00 summer campers and 462 summer recreational and enrichment programs, their numbers swell by another 300 staffers, comprised mostly of coaches and teachers from the local school system. These teacher/coach mentors play an important role in the lives of the kids, ages 3-18 that the organization serves.
Who is Don Blackwood?
Prior to joining PSA, as a non-paid Board member and now Chairman of the Board, he was a technology executive with Fujitsu who for over 35 years managed a $ billion-dollar annual operating budget and a large team. Yet he says managing an organization such as the PSA is even more complicated. And when you consider that level of operational, managerial and financial complexity for a non-profit, supported by a large volunteer team, one can easily begin to imagine some of the business problems to solve.
How do you manage such a successful non-profit?
Especially one where you are committed to taking no government funds and to making programs available to a very diverse customer base, where over 85% of the parents’ work. PSA offers early drop off and late pick up and three hot meals are served every day. While the age range of their recreational athletes is 3-18, their primary demographic is comprised of kids ages 7-11. They work daily to ensure their vision is more than just words on paper, “Do the right thing and make sure the kids are having a great time”. That they are safe. That the facilities are clean and well lit. That the kids grow to enjoy recreational sports, have fun and become good sports.
With hundreds of thousands of kids to register, across hundreds of different recreational and enrichment programs, in four locations, recreational facility management software is an absolute requirement. There simply isn’t enough staff, or time to do this much administrative work without the aid of very robust and easy to use software.
Dash and PSA Partners since 2010
PSA selected Dash as their software partner in 2010 after evaluating 10 different recreational facility management software solutions. From their list of ten, they narrowed it down to three companies who were invited to come to Texas to present to their selection committee. Prior to that meeting PSA had been using a home-grown software solution that they were quickly outgrowing and knew the level of effort to develop a larger proprietary system was simply beyond their reach, and not the right use of their time and resources. Beyond those considerations they were experiencing too many errors on the revenue side of their business, billing errors, double billings, etc. which required costly corrections.
Dash appealed to PSA for a number of reasons, not the least of which, the parent company for Dash, Arena Sports, is a successful operator of multiple, high-growth, recreational facilities in Washington State. Arena Sports also supports over 110 Lil’ Kickers franchise locations in the US. Don Crowe, the founder of Arena Sports came to present with the team from Dash. Listening to someone who was in their business, who was running an organization that was far larger than theirs and running it well gave them confidence to choose Dash.
“Ours is not a complicated sale, it’s a series of personal decisions, which are easily facilitated by technology. Dash makes it easy for parents and athletes to register whenever they have a few free minutes.”
The numbers speak for themselves—Since choosing Dash what benefits has PSA experienced?
- First big growth— from two facilities to four. In January of 2010, they went from 45,000 annual registrants to today over 115,000 annual registrants. They had six customer service people in two facilities. Today they handily manage double the number of facilities without a corresponding doubling in staff.
- Operational efficiency, in 2010 over 85% of their administrative work was done face to face, requiring staff to explain programs, review schedules/locations, register users and take payments. Today less than 15% of that work is done face to face. Using the Dash customer portal. It’s possible for users to research programs of interest, consider a schedule that suits their lifestyle, then register and pay, securely, on-line.
- The importance of self-serve, as Don says, theirs is not a complicated sale, it’s a series of personal decisions, that can easily be facilitated by technology. What he needed was a stable platform that was easy and powerful enough for staff to use and intuitive enough for customers to use.
- The importance of financial accuracy and reporting, the Dash platform meets the most rigorous financial metrics for accuracy, audit control and POS security.
- The power of customer loyalty and its role in growth—a big benefit of Dash is the ability to effectively manage customer relationships through the platform. To know who is in the facility at any given time. To know what their interests are and how to assist them in efficiently and securely accessing the programs they want. Dash is a proven solution for building loyalty, repeat usage and improving both the top and bottom line.
In a non-profit such as PSA, where every dollar spent needs to support organizational goals, and underpin growth and financial stability, Dash has been just the right partner for nearly 10 years.
