Company Overview
USA Racquetball (USAR) is the National Governing Body
for the sport of racquetball, recognized by the U.S. Olympic Committee and is
committed to excellence and service to our members. We provide opportunities for
members and enthusiasts to actively participate in the sport through sanctioning
of events, administration of programs and development of competitive
teams.
Business Challenge
USA Racquetball was woefully behind the times in terms of technology solutions. The organization lacked a website of any kind, and it had very poor communications avenue to its constituent state associations. Furthermore, tracking of entities such as player profiles, club facilities, tournament data, even membership information was all managed via cumbersome spreadsheets. The USAR wished to develop a comprehensive solution that would not only give the organization a powerful web presence but make it easier for their internal staff to communicate with both members and the state associations.
X3 Solution
X3 proposed and built a portal based framework designed to allow the national office to publish content that could then be consumed by the state association websites via RSS and XML feeds. X3 then designed a built a series of customized modules to provide unique functionality to the USAR website. some of these include: a Player Directory that allows players to update their own information, a Court Directory that allows the public to submit changes or updates to court information, and a unified event calendar tied into both the club and player directory to allow show players what is happen in their area. In addition, because the solution was based on a portal framework, the USAR was able to offer the same solution to its state associations that needed thier own website.
Results
The result was an immediate success. The USAR was able to drastically simplify its communications process and provide much more timely information to its members. Perhaps the biggest win, however, was the benefit to the various state associations. Over 35 states jumped on the portal framework and now enjoy a unified data repository directly with the national office.