February 2012 - Parks & Recreation - 55

t e c H N o Lo Gy

Park agency automation software
grows up and goes mobile

rt, and in Sync
''C
 

an't We Let the Patrons Do this For theMseLves? " John Willey, CEO of Ver-

mont Systems, remembers saying of one of the early versions of his company's park agency registration software. He laughs as he recalls how quickly
he and his colleagues dismissed the idea as far-fetched. It was the early 1990s, he explains: The Web was in its infancy, and most in the field were thrilled simply to see registrations expedited and paperwork reduced.
Park and recreation software packages, which
fi rst came on the market in the mid-1980s as utilities for entering and tracking patron registrations,
have evolved to handle as many different functions
and tasks as the agencies they serve. They reserve
campgrounds and tee times, book fields and facilities, track labor and equipment usage, expedite
work orders, generate league schedules, manage
user passes and IDs, conduct point-of-sale transactions, and more. Not to mention spitting out fi nely
tuned reports on anything those data records encompass. And, increasingly, agencies' public-facing
( " front-end " ) and in-house ( " back-end " ) systems are
being designed to bridge the divide between signing up patrons and operating facilities.
The direction of park and recreation software
systems is being steered not only by the expansion
of online and mobile technologies, but also by the
pressures of economic recession. These pressures
include increasing public demand for park services, programs, and facilities; agencies' move toward
" pay-to-play " revenue models; exploding interest
nationwide in campground tourism and park-run attractions and events; and continual pressures on departments to justify every dollar budgeted or spent.

All are leading agencies and software vendors to ask
how they can integrate functions, leverage Web platforms and mobile devices-and mine, analyze, and
present data for smarter marketing and planning.

Seamless
The line between public-facing registration/reservation systems and in-house management automation is
blurring, says NRPA's Bill Beckner, a park research
specialist and veteran agency director. Beckner,
who introduced Fairfax County, Virginia, to its fi rst
automated registration systems in the 1990s, notes
the steadily growing use of computer-aided maintenance management systems (CMMSs) across the
parks and recreation field. Not only are agencies
reaping the benefits of tracking labor, materials, and
equipment-but their constituents are also being
served by front-end/back-end integrations that alert
operations personnel to facilities needs as classes
are fi lled and reservations are booked.
" The goal is cross-departmental communication, "
says Willey, of the dovetailing of the Vermont Systems CMMS (MainTrac) with its registration system
(RecTrac). " We are trying to eliminate manual steps
for getting work orders to the field. "

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& Recreation

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February 2012 - Parks & Recreation

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