How Belgian Cycling has streamlined its appointing process and reduced their expenses

Being a proud Belgian company, RefAssist is always thrilled to add another Belgian sports federation to their portfolio, especially if that sport is one Belgians excel at on an international level. 

The partnership with Belgian Cycling not only allows RefAssist to add a new sports discipline to their portfolio, but also to develop a software package specifically for endurance sports.

RefAssist originated as an appointing tool for football matches. Over the last ten years, the product has grown into a state-of-the-art official management platform that is used all over the world in 11 sports disciplines: football, hockey, tennis, squash, netball, basketball, Australian football, cricket, water polo, pickleball and cycling. 

Challenge

Until recently, there was no known all-in-one appointment solution for endurance sports. This resulted in an inefficient appointment process, high transport costs, intricate communication flows towards the officials and scattered match and official data.

The Belgian Cycling Federation has over 650 active match officials, divided into 44 different commissioner types. It also organises races in eight different sports disciplines, so performing high-quality appointments is no easy feat.

Approach

RefAssist has the experience and the technical know-how to support Belgian Cycling with these issues.

Dieter De Naeyer, CEO at RefAssist, comments:

“We are used to setting up big projects in different sports disciplines, for federations across the world. The challenge with this particular case was developing a new appointing logic, where there was no home team playing against an away team. We had to reinvent ourselves and create new flows based on this client’s requirements.

Solution

A crucial pillar of the RefAssist logic is its structure: multiple matches are added to a series, multiple series form a division and several divisions make up an appointment level. This logic had to be changed for cycling, where there are no home and away teams competing against each other.

The result? A completely new appointing screen focusing on entire series with their individual races.

Please note that no actual personal details are shown, only fake data is used in the above screenshot.

In case of two consecutive races in the same series, appointments can be copied from one race to the next in one click. The personal details of the appointable officials are summarised in a compact overview, while the details about the location can be found in another tab.

Travel distances are calculated automatically and shown immediately in the appointment screen.

The appointer can customise each grid. That way, they can choose which information is relevant during the appointing process.

Notifications for all appointments can be sent to the officials at once at any point in time thanks to the publishing functionality.

Results

By using RefAssist, Belgian Cycling has so far appointed over 1,500 races across 8 cycling disciplines. Per stage, configurations have been set for the required commissioner types and the relevant appointment fees each official should get. Transport expenses and relevant stage fees are calculated automatically.

Our partners at Belgian Cycling summarise their experience as follows: 

At the end of 2024, we chose the RefAssist platform to manage our officials. Thanks to this partnership, we have adopted a uniform and user-friendly work flow for appointing and managing jury members for all cycling disciplines within Belgian Cycling.

Much of the appointing process has been streamlined and travel distances and consequent expenses are reduced. Officials have all of their information in one platform and can easily check the status of their appointments and payments. They are notified of changes both in the application itself and via email.

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