We have seen a surge of different industries wanting to utilize the benefits of the Cloud. But not knowing where to start or how to create the best architecture for their needs. The Cloud has enabled every industry to operate like an enterprise and has the tools that help businesses stay competitive. One industry has seen a major digital transformation: the sports industry. Creating an affordable cloud-based membership portal is essential for sports organizations to streamline operations, improve member engagement, and offer enhanced services. These portals not only provide a centralized platform for managing memberships, payments, and communications but also leverage data analytics to personalize experiences and drive better decision-making. By embracing cloud technology, sports organizations can ensure scalability, security, and cost-efficiency, ultimately delivering superior value to their members and staying ahead in a competitive market.
Sports Industry Overview
This industry is probably one of the most important, especially in The United States. Sports are considered an essential and valued part of the American lifestyle. Not only for entertainment purposes but for family bonding, personal achievement, and so forth. The sports industry represents community and culture of high achievement and excellence. With the vast complexity of technology and this industry, elevating cloud strategies is important for every sports organization. Ensuring digital assets are protected, secure, and available to the masses is vital to a competitive edge, reputation, and business success. In today’s times, not having control of your company’s IT environment can lead to destructive outcomes that can cause disreputable circumstances.
The Cloud & Sports
With cloud-based software, we are now able to send and receive an abundant amount of data and information on any device that can connect to the internet. With the use of the cloud, sports fans are now able to experience watching sports like no way before. Fans can now interact with their favorite teams and players more easily, more efficiently, and from multiple perspectives – all in near real-time as events unfold. The sports industry has forever been changed due to the use of the cloud and the positive effects it has on viewers and the organization.
No matter the tier of the sport, you can broadcast yourself and achieve a different audience than you otherwise would have gotten without proper recognition. The cloud allows people and things to come together in a way that is unique to the cloud. Due to it, we now have access to the world, and if you have access to the world, you have access to more consumers. Not only that but your business costs can be decreased and your collaborative efforts, productivity, and overall success can be increased by implementing cloud-based software into your business systems. This leads you to why Front Range Systems is needed to help your business’s effectiveness to have a competitive, strategic edge over competition in your industry.
We’ve worked with a few sports organizations. Although all of our clients are memorable, one of our favorite cloud migration stories comes from the Women’s Pro Rodeo Association and their need for a cost-effective cloud-based membership portal.
Company Insight: The Women’s Pro Rodeo Association is one of the largest rodeo-sanctioning bodies in the world and is open exclusively to women eighteen years of age and older- It is the oldest women’s sports organization and has over 3,000 members of professional women in rodeo.
Our Process Creating an Affordable Cloud-Based Membership Portal
Overview
Professional and amateur riders must stay updated on different rodeo fees, news, and locations of events. Our client was looking for a secure, functional membership portal application that would eliminate other channels of receiving data from being needed like physical mail or phone. For this project, we implemented a custom portal for our client’s members that provides information on their member’s membership status, fines, fees, and account balance. Users will have easy access to the application. They will be able to renew memberships, pay for fees, review their account balances, and search for rodeo seasons by state and year. The application was designed with all device types in mind with a mobile-first approach.
The Challenge
Having a fixed budget. Trying to meet the needs of the client while also respecting the budget. Budget is always a constraint with every project, and this one was no exception. We maximized the client’s budget. From there we were able to create the necessary attributes our client needed to sustain effectiveness and efficiency.
The client also had limited time available to devote to this high-priority project. We maximized every opportunity when speaking with the client. Even with limited conversation, we were able to create a web application that met our client’s needs. We provided them with real solutions that helped to future-proof their software systems.
The Approach
We knew the client needed a reliable web application that was easy to use and could save their staff time. A design and function review meeting with our client, designer, and dev team was held to determine our client’s current business process. This meeting covered how we can automate their business process with software.
We used Angular, a JavaScript platform that uses a single framework for the front end to create single-page applications. This allowed us to reach the requirements, needs, and wants of the client from a visual and functional perspective. The portal made for the client is a Single Page Application (SPA) with simple navigation. It’s very straightforward and uses easily identifiable tabs to make the users’ experience that much better.
.NET Core was also used for a cross-platform back-end framework. This can be run on any major server OS (Windows, Linux, and Mac). Using .NET Core, we chose Linux, as the operating system, which greatly reduced the hosting costs. MySQL was used for the backend database of the system. MySQL, a database management system, gave the client’s web application higher performance, higher security, and lower costs. Plus, we could integrate with their existing systems at the database level, providing the client with a seamless experience.
Solution
The Front Range Systems team built a cost-effective, functional, and secure application that solved our client’s challenges. We helped them create something very specific for what they needed. With our implementation of custom software, our client can have easy access to the application from any device. Not only that but member analytics stay updated, and employee workload has decreased substantially.
Among the benefits of using .NetCore and MySQL, our client noted
- Effective membership management.
- Easy access to information.
- Saving time.
- Seamless transition to the cloud.
- Decreased costs through on-demand scaling of resources
An elevated cloud migration strategy can take even the most successful company to new heights. Custom software development correlates to business agility. Improving security, consumer availability, and team performance starts with an organization’s attempt to elevate its software systems. Creating a competitive cloud strategy is vital today. With the right team of experts future-proofing your systems can be a seamless process.
If you want to learn more about customer portals or other services, check out our website for more information. frontrangesystems.com
Interested in knowing more about our processes and knowledge on similar topics? Check out our LinkedIn newsletter for more information. Subscribe on LinkedIn