How we at YouTooCanRun ensure that errors do not come from wrong underlying data

Posted On 24 Feb 2017

Tag: data integrity, Race Day, sole registration platform, ticketing partner, timing certificates, YouTooCanRun

At YouTooCanRun it is always about providing excellent quality to the runners throughout the interaction cycle. This often terminates with timing certificates,smses and declaring prize winners on race day.

Often prize winners are messed due to several reasons. Some of these reasons are attributable to the registration platform that is used to capture the runners data.

Organisers are of several types when it comes to mandating registration platforms for their events.

– Those who go with the cheapest..often the event ticketing agencies who otherwise do movie tickets and other events where data capture is not so sensitive. Naturally errors creep in and unless rectified at subsequent stages, present themselves as gross in-competencies by the organisers on race day.

– Those who take a ‘distribution channel’ approach and appoint multiple agencies for the event. Such organisers mandate different ticketing platforms to ‘sell’ the event for them and tell them to feed from what they ‘catch’. Naturally the ticketing agencies (cannot call them registration platforms ) are not sensistive to the data capture part of the transaction. Their only interest is to maximise their own earnings and are not bothered about event quality delivered to runners.

– Race organisers who are not runners and will conduct running events with no domain knowledge of the sport.

At YouTooCanRun we do not work with either approach. We ask for the sole mandate. Even if the organiser has a strong commercial obligation to got with another ticketing agency, we ask that we be made the sole registration platform.

– We ensure and assure data integrity of the runners.
– If there is another ticketing partner, we take control of that data and ensure the inconsistencies in data capture and validation are fixed.
– We come to the expo and ensure that bib distribution is correctly handled. We have a strong software to manage this process and we do this at a no-markup basis. We feel that errors that get injected at the expo at spot registrations should also be controlled.
– After closing of bib distribution, we stand for the quality of the data that gets passed on to the timing partner on pre race day evening.
– We are often at the race venue and ensure that prize winners are correctly announced since we have stood up for the quality of the underlying data.

This does not mean that there cannot be goof ups in prize distribution, but this ensures that such errors do not come from wrong underlying data.