Intro - End to End
We are going to give you a quick rundown of what we believe to be the Top 10 features a rodeo management software system should have. A bit of a preamble here. When we first began building the Rodeo Management System in 2014, we knew about 5% of what we needed to know. we learned as we grew and when we sold it in 2022, we were pretty close. So here's our Top 10 features, some of these are things we have learned early on and some are much more recent.
We have worked with rodeo associations who were looking to transition from a cobbled together mish mash of spreadsheets, database software, and hosted forms. We have talked to associations who were using software that had not been updated in 20 years. We have heard the frustrated voices of rodeo admins that worked with providers that offer no support.
As we said in another article (What Makes a Good Rodeo Management System?), a good rodeo management system should support you from end-to-end of your rodeo season. Beginning with member management, through rodeo entries, draws, results calculations, and compiling your standings. As soon as you have to introduce external system, the whole system breaks down.
Member Management (by Admin & Members)
You must be able to add/edit and delete all of your member records. Without a comprehensive member database, your association will be constantly resorting to other systems, and jumping back and forth, to manage what needs to be managed. That's just half the equation. Your members want to have access to their information, to view their historical performance, and to update their contact information as needed.
Built-in Entry Forms
Don't rely on external entry forms (hosted form providers). The needs of rodeo associations are quite unique. Work with a system that has the entry forms integrated. Otherwise you will always have export/import issues to deal with and you will only have an up-to-date view of your rodeo entries after imports. This is inefficient.
Rodeo Formats
Rodeo management software should understand how rodeo operates. There are many rodeo draw formats from multiple-performance to multiple go rounds, sometimes including slack performances, sometimes go-round formats have averages. These should be settings available at the click of a button. You should never have to build the logic yourself.
Online Payment & Offline Payment
Your members complete your rodeo entry form and then pays their entry fees online. Done. A rodeo admin doesn't need to touch this. Convenience for the member. Efficiency for the organization. Win - win. Fully integrated online payment is the commerce model of almost all organizations in this day and age. But, we also need to recognize that this may only be a 90 to 95% solution and you need a way to record payments not processed online.
Ability to Edit / Add / Delete Entries
In the best rodeo weeks, everything goes 100% according to plan. In the worst weeks, it seems like 8 days of rain while the hay pile burns. Most weeks are something in-between, most likely something like the first one. But you need to be able to make changes, big and small, for too many reason to list. So you need to access to every aspect of the entries, without restrictions. If you can't fix it, it will likely stay broken and a problem for the whole rodeo. Check out the editing and manual over-ride features of the software you are investigating.
Draw Generation (placement and stock)
In goes the entrants, out comes the draw. Oh, if only it was so easy! I've built the logic for several rodeo draw systems. Behind the scenes, this is the most logically and mathematically complex part of a rodeo management system. Entry groups, draw priorities, draw preferences, performances, gos, and other confounding variables lead to many weeks of development and testing and at least a few glasses of celebration as it was completed. Regardless of our own efforts and finally successes, a rodeo draw feature that produces highly confident random draws following all your rules is a massive benefit of a rodeo management system that is worth celebration. This feature is on the "absolutely necessary to test" list for prior to stepping into your live rodeo. Test and re-test and then can you make edit to the draw (similar to the above requirement on entries). Let's face it, we know changes are going to be requested, we just don't yet know who and why, this time.
Stock Management
Some organizations will handle stock manually, drawing out of a hat by the entrants at the chute. Some events will be which ever steer wandered into the gate. Most organization will slightly more rigid stock draw rules, with a random draw generated and posted prior to the rodeo. Whichever means of drawing stock, you still need to have a method of managing your stock database and assigning (computer generated random assignment or manual) the stock to the entrants for their run. This feature is also on the "absolutely necessary to test" list for prior to stepping into your live rodeo.
Public Display of Schedules, Draws, Results, Standings
Your rodeo fans want to be able to follow along. Your members want to see up-to-date information on your website. Your members need to be able to quickly and easily access your rodeo schedule and all the important information on the upcoming rodeos. Each piece of rodeo information is important at different points in time in the rodeo season. Viewing the draw prior to loading the trailer means your members can plan their weekend rodeo schedule. Presenting the rodeo information in an accessible, complete, organized and easily understood manner means fewer phone calls to the rodeo admin and more time to take care of everything else.
Calculations of Payouts and Points
If your current software requires that the calculation of Payouts and Points for each event happens outside the software, likely in a spreadsheet, or, please say no, manually by calculator, then it's time to switch. Payout formulas are complicated. Points award systems are complicated. The best system, from the experienced software builders, will get this right for you.
Standings
Turning back to calendar to 2014, as we developed our first rodeo software program, the office manager of the rodeo association we were working with told us that, "on Fridays, I do the standings". I think our response was something similar to amazement. We were walking through the software they were currently using as we built the software to replace it. She was taking each rodeo, each event, each result, and entering into a spreadsheet, to update the season standings, which were then posted as a PDF on their website. So we gave her Fridays off! We built a replacement system that simply used the rodeo results data already in the database to automatically calculate season standings. A click of a switch in the dashboard and the season standings were posted to the organization's website. Literally from all of Friday to the 5 seconds to click a button.
Literally from all of Friday to the 5 seconds to click a button. Your rodeo software program should automatically calculate your season standings, your rookie standings, your all around standings, with little more effort from you that a click of a button.
Conclusion
You can likely list off a dozen other features that are in your Top 10. Would that make is a Top 22 list? We kept this to a list of the 10 most important. At any one time, you may find other features to be critically important. We get it. We can help you find that system.