Prior to 2010, the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) offered its 16,000 students access to more than 200 physical activities, recreations, and sports with a pen, piece of paper, a small system for registrations, and some Excel sheets.
The Challenge
Time-consuming, inefficient, spread-out systems for the Office of Physical Education, Recreation, and Sports (OPERS), the day-to-day processing was pretty time-consuming: "It was not set up to manage what we were doing so we really didn't get the information we needed. For example, it could take eight hours to run a report," said Todd Hammonds, facility center supervisor.
The Solution
After thorough research, UCSC was ready to implement Active Network's web-based software for online registration and payment processing, as well as memberships, facility reservations, equipment and point-of-sale management, and more. Todd added, "Active's software really fit our organization. Our programs are student driven rather than profit driven, which matches Active's business model. It was financially more feasible for us, too."
The Results
More time, more insight, more participation
Reporting: "There are so many different types of reports that show us exactly how things are going," said Ryan Andrews, executive director of OPERS. "We've never had that information before."
Email marketing: Ryan and Todd send targeted emails to students who haven't been using the facilities in awhile. For one program, they filled 75 seats within a few days through email campaigns.
Paper-free processes: "We've reduced a lot of paper," said Todd. "Between registration and equipment check out, we had a lot. Now we don't have any of that.
"With all systems online and organized in one place, OPERS sped up its admin work and had more time to focus on important goals: Last year it took us 10 months to reach of $5,000 goal. This year, it took us two days."
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