Servillian Technology is getting more hits than Albert Pujols of the Los Angeles Angels.
The Vernon-based application development and website solutions company is launching a cutting-edge online sports management tool called Spectrum. It is geared towards adult amateur and minor sports associations, and in the last two weeks, they have had more than 800 teams sign up to use the product.
“It is being received very well and seeing as there are over 117 million people who play amateur sports each year in North America, we have a large audience,” said Debra Holbrook, Servillian’s CAO, who operates the company with husband Allan (CEO), son Bradley (CTO) and three other staff members.
Added Bradley: “We’re targeting adult amateur sports because it is a very under-served market right now.”
For the past three years, Servillian has been beta testing Spectrum with the Vernon Co-ed Slo-pitch League. Bradley plays in the Competitive division with Team Caution, while Deb and Allan are on the Servillian Tech Monkeys in the Intermediate B group. It is partly their passion for sports that started them on the project.
The league website (vernoncoedslopitch.nsacanada.ca) looks much like any other similar site on the Internet. It features team rosters, statistics, schedules and league contact information. What sets Spectrum apart from competing web applications is that it overcomes traditional communication gaps in the system.
“The competitors usually only go to a certain level, and that’s player, team, league,” said Debra. “We go from the bottom of the chain to the top, and everything in between.”
Added Bradley: “They can’t get the information from the association level down to the player. With Spectrum they can. They can log onto Spectrum and post something and it goes all the way through.”
Another attractive feature Spectrum offers is online money management to handle things like player and team registration fees.
With a general ledger system built into the program, Spectrum assigns each team an “internal wallet” and is then able to track payments. To ensure user protection, all transactions are encrypted, no credit card information is stored on the system and Servillian has secured backing from a reputable processing company.
“Money always goes missing,” said Debra. “Whether it’s actually gone missing, or somebody took it, they can’t track it. Spectrum does all that for them.
“They (players) can use a credit card to pay their portion, but the manager never sees the card. It’s just ‘Here’s your funds.’ It all stays nice and neat and tidy and within the system.”
Before Servillian began beta testing Spectrum, Bradley decided it would be best to experience the various roles within a sports association. In addition to playing slo-pitch, he became involved as a team manager, umpire, coach and executive to learn how the system worked and how he could tailor Spectrum’s programming to maximize its capabilities.
Spectrum, which is readily adaptable to work with any sport, also features a useful league scheduler. Loaded with sophisticated algorithms, it is capable of handling erratic schedules. As an example, one slo-pitch team requested all its games to be played at one particular ball diamond. Bradley said most schedulers would randomly assign playing fields, but Spectrum handled the bizarre request. It turns out the team was made up of firefighters and they had to stay within the fire protection area.
Advances in industry technology have allowed Servillian Technology to capitalize on speed and efficiency, making its web solution services more affordable to smaller businesses.
“It used to be where if you wanted to get software written for your own company, you needed a fair sized budget,” said Bradley. “That’s come way down because we can build it (applications) on the web, we can deploy it on the web, we can fix it on the web.
“One of the things a lot of small businesses don’t understand is that things like this can save you loads of money.”
