Company Overview
Founded in 1977, the National Basketball Referees Association (NBRA) furthered the goals of several predecessors by seeking to advance athletics, sportsmanship, basketball, and the quality of sports officiating. The NBA recognizes the NBRA as the sole bargaining unit for the referees with all NBA referees members of the NBRA. Today, the NBRA represents 62 referees and 13 retired referees.
Opportunity
Perennial Strategy Group (PSG) developed a web site (nbra.net) to support the broad advocacy and public relations activities of its client, the National Basketball Referees Association (NBRA.) This site’s target audience was initially members who typically had access to a variety of computer operating systems and internet connections.
However, over time this original web site has had difficulty meeting the growing needs of its members. Frequent travel, differing game schedules and locations make contact with and between the referees very difficult during the basketball season. This communication weakness is the main reason that the creation of a “Members Only” area within the web site has been proposed. This restricted area will provide members with a virtual community where they can communicate among themselves, find and share information about visiting cities, hold meetings, and privately contact individuals, the NBRA Executive Board, and Perennial Strategy Group.
Solution
PSG chose Swipht to assist with a solution when the firm originally selected for the project encountered difficulties in completing the task. The new goal was to redesign the partially developed site from the ground up. This new approach would include a complete overhaul of the back-end technology developed in .Net. In addition, a new front-end design would provide users with a more efficient and attractive entry point. Upon completion, the web site would be able to be managed by an administrative interface.
Results
This project’s results were measured by how well the original objectives were met. Swipht created a virtual community for the referees which will improve communication between them, the NBRA Executive Board and PSG by enabling rapid feedback and quick issue resolution. Reduction in the web site’s total cost of ownership over the long term was also achieved with the use of .Net. .Net allows for greater self-sufficiency in site maintenance when non-technical site administrators can add, edit and delete site pages and content and can also manage member account information without relying on outside sources for assistance. Finally, Swipht also provided a means for preventing non-authorized users from accessing the “Members Only” area while still allowing potential members access to the site with minimal intervention from the site administrator.
Technologies
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