Formed by Brian Lawler: WSYSA VP of Administration

Hannah Ducey: Committee Chair
About 15 years of experience as registrar
Club (LVR - 1500 players) - 10 years
Association (SYSA -11,500 players, 14 clubs) - 8 years
Currently WSYSA Registrar - 1 year

Bob Sigley: (Magnolia Soccer Club/SYSA/District 1)

Club registrar (Magnolia - 700 players) - 6 years

Association registrar (SYSA) - 1 year

Setup and used Demosphere on line registration (Magnolia) - 2 years

Attempted to setup ADG on line registration at the association and multiple club level - the system could not be configured in a timely manner to meet our requirements and ended up being used in only a rudimentary fashion for data collection at ECFC. Successfully replaced ADG with Demosphere for three clubs with new registrars (Capitol Hill - 700, Ballard -1400, McGilvra - 500).

Peter Lechner: (Issaquah Soccer Club/ESYSA/District 2)

Software developer, systems analyst and engineer - banking software\

Worked with the implementation of CountMeIn on line registration (ISC) - 2 years

Susan Robicheau: (Puyallup Soccer Club/TPCJSA/District 3)

Club registrar - 5 years, all paper

Kari Wright: (Bainbridge Island Youth Soccer Club/NSYSA/District 4)

Club registrar (BISYC - 1200 players) - 3 years

Converted club registration from Access program to live on line registration system of Youth Leagues (registering 3rd fall recreational season) – spring and fall seasons

Jake Henak: WSYSA Technology Director - 3 years

Anna Shaw: WSYSA Director of Operations - 3 years

Brian Lawler: WSYSA VP of Administration

Bill White: WSYSA VP of Development


Investigation

The WSYSA board had agreed 2 years earlier to design a single source database and a mandatory on line registration system for the fall season of 2005. The Committee formed by Brian Lawler in January to advise WSYSA on the needs, feasibility and implementation of the single source database and on line registration system. The committee met at least twice a month from January through August of 2004.

The committee, calling upon the experience of its members, compiled a list of requirements and specific needs for clubs, associations and the state. It then

solicited comments from Association Registrars, Association Presidents and District Commissioners. There was overwhelmingly positive feedback to provide and implement these features and no significant change in criteria the committee had compiled.

Representatives of the WSYSA state office reviewed on line systems with vendors at the national meeting in Boston. Other committee members continued to gain experience working with a variety of outside vendors while the committee was deliberating.

We all became aware that complex, functional systems are available and continue to improve. We realized that it was likely that systems might exist that could meet our criteria immediately. The assurance of providing an operational system compared to the uncertainty in developing a fully functional system in a timely manner led us to conclude that we should further investigate existing products.

To fully investigate the options, the committee decided to request proposals from vendors to evaluate the technology that is currently available. The committee wrote a Request for Proposal (RFP) based on the criteria we had developed. We included those criteria as a system requirement matrix in the RFP.

We sent the RFP to every vendor we could identify that might have a complete system and posted the RFP on the WSYSA website. Those vendors included in the mailing were: The Active Network, Affinity Soccer, Arena Sports, Count Me In Corp., Demosphere, PreEnroll, Bonzi Development Group, Youth Leagues USA, Ridge Star, Sports Pilot, Thriva LLC, OtterPlay.

Nine vendors (Affinity Soccer, Bonzi Development Group, Count Me In, Demosphere, PreEnroll, Sports Pilot, The Active Network, Triva LLC, and Youth Leagues USA all responded. All proposals submitted were evaluated on the following criteria:

• Ability to demonstrate an existing system
  
• Compliance with RFP requirements
  
• Completeness of proposal

An expanded matrix was designed and eight vendors complied with our request for further information, PreEnroll did not submit a more comprehensive report. A chart matching the ability of each vendor to meet each specific criterion was tabulated.

Based on satisfying the requirements described in the expanded matrix the committee selected five of the vendors (Affinity Soccer, Bonzi Development Group, Sports Pilot, Thriva LLC, Youth Leagues USA) to give a 3-hour presentation to the committee and provide a live demonstration of their product. The five companies were evaluated on the following:

Presentation, qualifications, competence, past performance of comparable systems based on reference verification, approach to planning, organizing, flexibility, management and implementation of the WSYSA project, availability of vendor and its staff to do the work expeditiously, service and support, and price.

The committee eliminated two vendors (Affinity Soccer & Sports Pilot) based on their inability to demonstrate features essential to system requirements.

At subsequent meeting, after further reference checking and discussion, the three remaining vendors (Bonzi Development Group, Thriva LLC, and Youth Leagues USA) were ranked by the committee members. Bonzi was selected as the top choice by an overwhelming majority of the committee members.

Three members of the committee made a site visit inspecting the office and the offsite location of the servers. The committee then reviewed some of the pricing details and had initial pricing discussions.


Result

In August, committee members presented our findings to the WSYSA Board of Directors with the recommendation that a contract be negotiated with Bonzi.

The District Commissioners, after taking time to consult with their members and provide additional questions to the committee to supply answers to was then ready to vote on the committee’s recommendation. The WSYSA Board of Directors met and voted to adopt the Bonzi system.


Reasoning/Rationale

Why go on line?
Clubs are already seeking out, contracting with, implementing and paying on line registration systems.

• Security
  
• Birth certificates
  
• Record keeping, such as waivers and releases
  
• Data integrity
  
• Ease of registration
  
• Players, Parents, Coaches, Registrars
  
• Compatible with PC's and Mac's and any browser
  
• Usable with dial up access
  
• Ability to register teams
  
• Tournaments, LPTs, State Cups
  
• Ability to use data
  
• Families, teams, coaches, boards, clubs, assoc, dist, state
  
• Multi level, layered access privileges
  
• Easier printing of player cards and tournament rosters
  
• Ease of communication
  
• Mailing labels, broadcast e-mail
  
• Scheduling
  
• Bonzi includes a robust scheduling module
  
• Risk Management
  
• Initiation of background check and record keeping
  
• Tracking players over the years
  
• Single player user id
  
• No Redundancy in data entry
  
• Reduce volunteer time
  
• Clubs need better tools to meet demands of state. I.e., Risk management, more fields of information
  
• Referee scheduling and disciplinary tracking can be integrated.
  
• Club or Association level web hosting is available with integrated features such as automatic posting of schedules
  Why an outside vendor?

April 2005 is the deadline to be on line. The Committees recommendation is the quickest, most efficient manner to accomplish that goal.


Outside vendors can provide proven products by the deadline
It would not be an efficient use of resources to build our own system
Entire state office agrees. They support outsourcing
Escrowed software. If company goes out of business or sells its business we still own product


Implementation

State Schedule

• 3-month schedule after BOD approval and contract with chosen vendor
  
• Develop detailed specs for all levels of state and implementation time line
  
• Training of state wide volunteers
  
• Testing
  
• Implementation of system
  

Club Schedule

• 3-week schedule for clubs
  
• Customization
  
• Training
  
• Scope
  
• Make it so attractive that clubs will want to use
  
• Offer more service than they have now for lower cost to entice users
  
• Means to upload data from different systems into state system
  

Costs. How do we pay for it?

State Costs

• Based on preliminary budget proposal, no state player fee increase would be necessary
  
• Want state to negotiate with vendor to make the package attractive to clubs

Club Costs

• Cost advantage to use state system vs. remaining on individual system.
  
• Contracts with individual vendors.
  

Possible Obstacles

• Those opposed to the technology
  
• Those committed to previous systems