Bend, Oregon is a rapidly growing town of approximately a hundred thousand outdoor and active people. Hear how Vermont Systems RecTrac has become a veritable “Swiss army knife” for the needs of the community and associates at the Bend Park and Recreation District.

We caught up with Jut McDaniels, IT Specialist for the district, to better understand how he uses Vermont Systems RecTrac to achieve the goals they’ve established and make an impact in his community. Watch the video and read part of the transcript of our interview below.

How has Vermont Systems helped lead the way forward?

They’re taking everyone’s input to make it not just focused on what we need but what everyone needs with our voice included as well which I can appreciate. The best part about RecTrac that I’ve found has been the hierarchy that you can build into it. I think it’s really good at doing kind of everything you need –  it’s sort of like a Swiss army knife, it can do everything. And I don’t think many of the other ones and on that I might be biased but aren’t as well supported.

What is it like working with Vermont Systems?

I think it’s a very customer-centric organization. I say that truthfully they. They may not always have the answer you’re looking for or the answer that you need right away but they will investigate and you know if they don’t know they’ll ask someone else and they’ll keep moving up the ranks. I think also with that comes listening to what our needs are. They’re not trying to sell a process, they’re trying to sell a product that can accommodate the processes that we have for our particular district, our policies, our board you know needs.

How does it impact the patron experience?

The patrons have the ability to purchase something online we can now set up a lot more self-service criteria we can add cancellation policies – we can sell them passes and have it match their age criteria things like that that wasn’t always the case in the past – I feel like RecTrac has really helped expand some of that self-serve functionality online to the patrons. And we’ve done a lot of things to kind of reduce the amount of clicks uh customer service staff has to do.

How is your role important to the community?

I just believe that it is impacting to the patrons and to the customers so I feel like I feel the role of I know what our frontline staff needs our customer service teams our coordinators I know what they need so I can work with RecTrac to figure it out my own how to manipulate the software to make it as efficient as I can for them so they can be as efficient as they can be to get to to get the patrons into an activity to buy a pass into our facilities, to rent one of our you know picnic shelters, or whatever and really try to streamline that process so the fewer hurdles that they have to deal with and the fewer questions and the less hiccups that they might have and the faster that all happens I feel like ultimately gains a better experience overall. I can make that process as streamlined and easy as possible for both the end-user, the customer, and our internal users then I feel like I’m doing my job and it makes everyone happier and more willing to recreate and get out and enjoy the outdoors.

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