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Millbrae, CA Chooses CivicPlus® Recreation Management for Ease of Use Support

Keys to Project:

Ease of use, resident self-service functionality, technical support

City:

Millbrae, CA

Population:

22,718

Just south of San Francisco, California is a beautiful city that offers its citizens a pleasant way of life and a wide variety of sports and leisure opportunities. Those travelers arriving by plane to San Francisco are greeted by this exceptional community upon arrival at San Francisco International Airport. In this way, the City of Millbrae, California, is a kind of warm, welcoming friend to visitors of the Bay Area. For those who have chosen to call it home, Millbrae is a place where its local leaders provide quality services, engaging activities, and modern conveniences. The City’s commitment to enabling positive citizen experiences and digital innovation can be experienced firsthand by those registering online to take advantage of its parks and recreation activities. Thanks to Millbrae’s decision to partner with CivicPlus for the use of its recreation management software, citizens can more easily register for activities and leagues than ever before, making it easy to engage and interact.

Before CivicRec

In his role as the Millbrae Recreation Coordinator for Youth and Adult Sports, Geofrey Gabriel is responsible for the successful planning and execution of youth sports programs for the City’s four elementary schools, one middle school, and its adult sports activities and leagues. With dozens of seasonal offerings and without an intuitive online registration system, the process of registering participants was time-consuming and inefficient.

“Before [CivicPlus] our registration process posed a challenge to engaging citizens with our program offerings,” said Gabriel. “Our previous system was pretty out of date and not easy to use, so we received many in-person registrations.”

According to Gabriel, when the City’s license and support agreement for its previous software was approaching its expiration, he and the Parks and Recreation department’s leadership team knew that the time was right to seek out a more modern and user-friendly system.

“The timing to make a switch was perfect,” said Gabriel. “We didn’t want to renew our previous system, and at the same time, we had noticed that there were much better systems out there than what we had been using.”

The City’s Parks and Recreation team conducted a thorough exploration and vetting process of recreation management software systems available to the public sector. In the end, there was a clear best-in-class selection.

“We tried multiple software systems and felt that [CivicPlus] was best suited to our needs,” said Gabriel.

A Strategic Implementation

Gabriel, his superintendent, and the City’s recreation manager worked with the CivicPlus project management team to implement the software and transition the department from its previous, outdated software to CivicPlus Recreation Management’s advanced functionality. Gabriel recalls being pleasantly surprised at several points throughout the implementation process by the software’s robust functionality.

“I’d ask questions of our implementation team, thinking about things we could never accomplish in the past, and to my surprise, [CivicPlus] always had the functionality that I needed built-in.”

After CivicPlus Recreation Management

Today, both the City of Millbrae’s Parks and Recreation team and its citizens are thrilled by the CivicPlus Recreation Management software’s ease of use and modern functionality. For Gabriel, the software has saved him time as a one-source solution for all his back-end data management and front-end communications.

“Before [CivicPlus], I used a third-party website solution to promote our adult leagues because our previous software didn’t give me the flexibility that I needed to promote our offerings,” said Gabriel. “It made for a more complicated registration process for our citizens. Now with [CivicPlus], we are offering our citizens an easy-to-use registration system that is an all-in-one administration system for us.”

Gabriel adds that citizens have shared positive feedback since the launch of the…registration system.

“Our citizens have told us how much they love the new website and how easy it is to use,” said Gabriel. “And I’ve heard the same feedback from our league managers, coaches, and participants too.”

With the CivicPlus Recreation Management software, citizens can more easily register for activities online, which saves them from having to register in person during open office hours, and saves Gabriel time during his workday too. Additional features that are valuable to Gabriel include the league management reports and the automated digital email receipts.

“Now I can sign people up, and I don’t have to generate a receipt, save it to my computer, upload it to my email, and send it to the citizen. It’s automatic. It’s those types of simple things that are so much easier with [CivicPlus].”

And of course, Gabriel appreciates the support of the CivicPlus Technical Support Team.

“The support team has been great. I’ve been using the chat feature when I have questions, and the staff is great. In fact, we know each other by name now.”

If you’re ready to trade in an inflexible recreation management software for modern and flexible functionality backed by an award-winning technical support teamtake a self-guided demonstration of our Recreation Management software.

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