The All-in-One Bowls Club Management System
Having had our Bowlr management system in place for about a year, we are now in a good position to reflect on the success of its installation, remarks Ed Morris, Club Manager at Essex County.
As much as anything else, we decided on purchasing Bowlr in order to maximise our indoor rink usage and therefore rink fee revenue. We were never in any doubt as to whether Bowlr would be able to do this for us, and certainly our 2017 accounts are showing a nice increase.
Beyond the purely financial effect, the important factors for us (as well as most other clubs, we would imagine!) are the number of hours saved by using a better system and also the ease of use. A good example of this was highlighted recently when we tried to set up our leagues for the 2018/19 season. I phoned the Bowlr team asking if there was any way we could transfer over the structure from the season before, as this would save a lot of time in setting up the leagues, which can be a little painstaking to say the least.
Whilst we were informed that this function was not available yet, it had already been requested by another club and was being worked on. This shows the usefulness of the ‘community’ created by the clubs using Bowlr, as improvements requested by one club can be made available to everyone, which may include something that other clubs hadn’t even thought about that could make their lives easier! The fact that the product is still evolving and the support is available to facilitate this is very important to us.
Our competitive members have taken to the system very well, including booking of rinks online. Being able to book yourself, rather than laboriously needing to phone committee members repeatedly to secure a rink for competitions, is a great improvement for us.
As for our other members, it's certainly a mixed bag! Some people detest change no matter how much people try to convince them it is for the best. As such, we have had some occasions where the iPad league scoring input has been flat out ignored – this is frustrating, but was unavoidable at the time. The idea of another club to only award points if the score is inputted certainly sounds like a legitimate way forward for avoiding this.
On the whole though, any members who may still have reservations about the system are very few in number and certainly don’t voice their opinion, knowing that the system has been successful overall. We look forward to further updates and community days and the continued growth and evolution of Bowlr.
We provide ongoing support for all aspects of our Bowlr system and take on board requests from all our clients, so that we can continue to improve the process. Get in touch today to find out more about how you can too can streamline your leagues, bookings and competitions on 01202 684400.