Case Study: USA Track and Field and Sport:80

When USA Track and Field (USATF) approached us, they needed a new business management platform to be delivered quickly.

With a multi-phased approach to transforming their digital capabilities, our solution has seen them benefit from a 200% increase in Platform traffic in the first six months of this year compared to the same period last year.

Why transition?

USATF were using a homegrown system that was past its shelf life, negatively impacted customer service, and was preventing the organisation from scaling.

Additionally, they found themselves with very little control over the system, reliant on contractors to further develop their technological offering.

“Our previous system was more than 10 years old, and we were having a really tough time keeping it running,” says USA Track and Field’s Director of Information Technology, Scott Galbreth.

“It was crashing daily, and it felt like we were spending all our time firefighting trying to fix problems, rather than working on projects that would support the growth of the organisation."

“As a custom membership system, it had multiple other solutions plugged in and we had a hard time developing it further.

“Ultimately, it was antiquated and unreliable.”

A constantly evolving solution

To combat these issues, USATF needed a solution to be delivered within a very short timeline.

Recognising that, we developed a multi-phase roadmap which would tackle their most-pressing requirements swiftly, while delivering future phases gradually, with a commitment to continually evolving the product.

The initial solution (the Minimum Viable Product) focused on a membership registration system for individuals, clubs, and state associations, while ensuring their Platform met governance and compliance requirements (e.g., athlete verifications, collecting certifications, and integrations with both SafeSport and NSCI). The initial solution also included a complex data migration which involved cleansing, consolidating, and migrating millions of records from the legacy system.

Phase two of the development plan incorporated functionality to support USATF’s complex event sanctioning process. This provided an end-to-end solution which captures event information, various evaluations, fees to be paid (including collecting the payments), insurance documents to be issued, and more. In addition, the second phase included our data visualisation dashboards, which has allowed the organisation to benefit from fast and easy insights which provide invaluable analytical capabilities. During this phase we also delivered an upgrade to our email marketing module, Campaign Manager, which has benefitted all of the Sport:80 user base. The module has and continues to save the organisation approximately 50% on the costs of their previous email marketing solution.

The third phase which is currently in development, centres around a push on coaching and education capabilities, primarily course registrations and a seamless integration with USATFs Learning Management System. We are also working on functionality for athlete transfers, simplification of background screening processes, volunteer management, and more benefits for state associations and clubs.

Our COO, Jonny Turner, explained why the collaborative style of this agreement makes the project particularly effective.

“It was an exciting time for us, agreeing to work with an NGB of the stature and scale of USA Track & Field. We were aware of the challenge before us with a circa nine-month turnaround for the launch of an initial MVP that needed to measure up to their ambitions.

"Regardless, we were confident in our technology and the abilities of our team to deliver a solution which would meet expectations and surpass others in the market as we moved into future phases.

"What is most pleasing is the speed at which we have been able to progress the product for USA Track & Field. We have been able to work with Scott and the team at USATF to carefully plan and deliver new functionality. It’s a really progressive approach to the NGB’s digital services which isn’t lost on the user base. USA Track & Field are seeing some really positive trends in terms of traffic and online engagement.  

"The roadmap continues to grow which means the end-goal is always a moving target for both us and USA Track & Field. This is the way it should be when it comes to technology, and the position we find ourselves in is testament to the way USATF have embraced the iterative approach to development.

"We will continue to invest in the relationship and are planning considerable developments that will benefit USATF and the wider Sport:80 community.”

Sport:80, an extension of your team

In us, USATF have secured a partner that has truly become an extension of their team

With multiple projects on-going at any one time and a continually evolving platform, productivity is perpetually increasing.

The relationship between our two organisations is flourishing, allowing us to invest in each other to increase the value of the partnership for both parties. As USATF work with us to keep developing the Platform, they get more and more out of it, and their digital offering continues to improve.

“The difference between our old system and the one we have in place now is night and day”, said Scott.

“Not only do we have more control and a significant improvement to the integrity of our data, but it’s just nice to not have to be constantly firefighting."

“We no longer have to spend all of our time trying to fix things like system crashes, we can be completely focused on planning for the future.

“So much more of our time is placed in developing exciting projects in other areas, and the new system has played a major role in supporting us to do that.

“The changes have really improved the user experience for our members and seeing the level of traffic on our Platform more than double is a fantastic demonstration of the work we have done.”

To learn more about Sport:80 and how we can help you, get in touch!