Ramsey, MN Saves Hours of Monthly Manual Administration with CivicPlus®

Located in the outskirts of the St. Paul and Minneapolis metropolitan areas, the City of Ramsey, Minnesota offers its over 25,000 citizens an idyllic blend of city and rural life. With access to the Twin Cities and a hometown feel, Ramsey is the perfect Midwest city for raising a family, staying active, and becoming engaged in the community. To continually offer Ramsey’s residents opportunities to learn, grow, and get involved, its Parks & Recreation Department is committed to providing quality facilities, beautiful parks, and motivational classes and activities.

With so many residents wanting to take advantage of everything the City of Ramsey has to offer, its Parks & Recreation Department reached the tipping point where manual facility scheduling and coordination became cumbersome and too time-consuming to be efficient. To solve its need for a resident-centric self-scheduling solution, the City of Ramsey turned to its existing website solution provider, CivicPlus^®, and its Recreation Management software.

Before CivicPlus Recreation Management

Before its migration to the CivicPlus Recreation Management system, Ramsey’s Parks & Recreation Assistant—who at the time was half of the department’s two-person staff—spent 24 to thirty hours per week on the phone with citizens coordinating facility reservations. According to Jason Fredrickson, City of Ramsey Information Technology Manager, when graduation season approached annually, the peak season for facility reservations, the Parks & Recreation Assistant’s time became nearly entirely consumed with manual request management and scheduling.

“Facility scheduling became a real challenge because our Assistant would be on the phone all day, every day, for weeks,” said Fredrickson.

At the time, the City of Ramsey was using a combination of manual documentation and Microsoft Outlook calendars to coordinate and document facility reservations. The Parks & Recreation Department needed a dedicated solution that would free up the Assistant’s time for other initiatives and that would allow residents to self-service their scheduling needs.

“The reason we sought out a solution was in part to free-up our Assistant’s time, but it was also to have a centralized place to store information, to process payments online, and to provide a 24/7 self-service solution for citizens,” said Fredrickson. “And it was a good move. For what we’ve seen since going live, people are placing facility reservations at all hours of the day and night.” 

A Single Platform and Partner

When it came time to select a recreation management software solution, the City of Ramsey chose to turn to its existing website solution provider.

“We reviewed a few software choices, but we have enjoyed the opportunity to tie our recreation management software in with our CivicPlus website. The continual innovation with the CivicPlus Recreation Management system and the CivicPlus Civic Experience Platform steered our decision. It was an easy choice.”

During the implementation process, Fredrickson led the integration strategy, migrating the City’s existing data into the CivicPlus Recreation Management system.

“Like our Parks & Recreation Department, our IT Department is small,” said Fredrickson. “As the project lead during the implementation, I worked with our internal staff and our CivicPlus team to learn the platform, configure the inner workings, and transition our manual processes into the CivicPlus software.”

After CivicPlus Recreation Management

Today, thanks to the implementation of the software’s self-service facility scheduling solution, the Parks & Recreation Department Assistant at the City of Ramsey spends significantly less time on the phone and can dedicate her focus to other vital projects.

“Our Assistant’s days are a lot less hectic,” said Fredrickson. “We went live with [the software] at a time when she would normally be flooded with reservation calls,” said Fredrickson. “To help facilitate the transition, we notified some of our busiest and most tech-savvy groups and people of interest in advance about [CivicPlus.] We watched the phones and monitored the online system closely during that first month. We immediately saw a reduction in volume and call duration. Having [the software] available for people to go online and self-service their reservations allows us to expand the window during which people can place reservations.”

In addition to the self-service reservation functionality, the CivicPlus Recreation Management system offers additional time-saving benefits for the City and its residents.

“Over the last few years, the City of Ramsey has started to expand its community recreation programs, including adding classes like dance, Zumba, yoga, art in the park for kids, exploring archery, and star watching,” said Fredrickson. “For that initiative, in its infancy, we used Eventbrite, but it was confusing to people, especially those who had never used Eventbrite previously. This year, we migrated our class registrations to CivicPlus, and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback. Our residents appreciate being able to use the same system to register for an event that they use to reserve a facility.”

Administratively, the City of Ramsey is benefitting from the software’s integrated payment functionality as well.

“We like having the ability to process refunds,” said Fredrickson. “We adapted our processes to take advantage of what the system can do for us, and it’s quite beneficial.”

Looking Ahead to Future Innovations

Today, Fredrickson and the Parks & Recreation Department are looking forward to the next release of the software’s enhancements—part of CivicPlus’ commitment to continual improvements and innovations.

“There are some features [CivicPlus] will be releasing soon that we’re really excited about. They’re going to continue to make our work easier.”

>>Click here to take a self-guided tour of the CivicPlus Recreation Management system.