As a former golf course superintendent, John Bladon knows how difficult it can be to justify a budget to a committee. Now, as an entrepreneur, he wants to do something to make it easier for superintendents to track what they do on the golf course and how much they spend doing it so they and other stakeholders can make smarter and more informed decisions.
Bladon is part of an entrepreneurial team that recently launched Turf Prophit, an online turf management system designed to simplify assigning tasks, tracking labor and inputs.
The system also can spit out reports detailing how much time and money is spent on various maintenance tasks.
"Being able to document everything we do and have it readily available for our members has made my life easier," said Matt Gourlay, CGCA at Colbert Hills in Manhattan, Kansas, an early adopter of the system. "It takes away from members the feeling that I am not doing my job. I can easily show them data on what, why and how we do jobs and spend money."
With a built-in digital job board, the system allows users to schedule, edit and monitor tasks from any mobile device or computer. An online weather component also lets everyone on the staff follow weather conditions within the system in real time.
Users can customize featured content to fit their specific needs and operational requirements, monitor staffing and expenditure efficiencies on a computer, tablet or smartphone; analyze data in Turf Prophit's GreenZone, forecast future budgets and expenses; and create reports in PDF or Excel format.
The data that is available is incredible. . . . We can share this with members who are used to doing business based on data and let them decide.
The secure, cloud-based system, which comes from the same Canada-based team that helped bring to market the TarpDevil system for deploying and removing greens covers, has been tested on more than 100 facilities around the world.
"Our mission is to find a simple, effective way to collect key information that is going to make a powerful impression on those who superintendents report to," Bladon said. "Providing a return to them and the end user, that is our impression of a win."
Set-up is easy and can be completed with a few simple step-by-step instructions sent to customers via email.
Users also can place orders with vendor partners through the system.
"This makes the office mobile and makes everything easier without making it painful," Bladon said. "The purchasing module lets users build and email P.O.s and track purchases. If you're tired of not knowing where you are budget-wise because accounting is way behind, this allows you to stay on point.
"The reporting function makes life easier throughout the season and budget-defensible items is why it came into existence."
Gourlay is still in his first week of using Turf Prophit, but says to track inputs and expenditures and turn that information into usable data should help him in the day-to-day operation of Colbert Hills.
"We've had it for two weeks, and have been using it for four or five days. Our equipment manager maintains all maintenance information on this program, my assistant runs the nine-hole course, and he runs everything on it, and our superintendent runs everything else on it," Gourlay said.
"The data that is available is incredible. Communication is key for me. I have to be able to communicate effectively to members, the board and our president. For example, with equipment maintenance, if they ask why we are spending more this year than last year, I can pull up a spreadsheet and show them what we are spending to maintain greensmowers, and that maybe it's worthwhile to replace them as part of our capital expenditures. If they want to know why the bunkers are raked or the pins changed, well, here's our data about where our labor is going, and we either have to increase what we spend on labor to get some things done, or cut back in other areas. We're not hiding anything. We can share this with members who are used to doing business based on data and let them decide."
