Golf USA Tee Time Coalition Conducts Very Insightful Research Study on Golf Software Firms…

The key objective of this research program was to “gain a comprehensive view of how OTTAs (Tee Time Distributors & Golf Management Systems) are serving golf course owners and managers,  This will include general feedback on perceptions of OTTAs, challenges and benefits around working with OTTAs and how well OTTAs perform on aspects of Golf USA Tee Time Coalition guidelines.”

Five firms were reviewed in depth: Club Prophet System, EZ Link, ForeUp, Golfnow Markeplace, Jonas (listed in alphabetical order).

The top rate rated firm, Club Prophet, was not surprising. The net promoter score of Golfnow was also not surprising.  They scored -26. Comments “competitors are better and price integrity” were cited as concerns. GolfNow Marketplace rated lowest on nearly every benchmark measured.

It should be noted that ForeUp rated higher in several categories on a very small sample size. How I wonder why. Our clients that use ForeUp are uniformly disappointed with the promises versus the performance. We know six golf courses that are likely to change from that firm at the end of this year when the contract expires.

We believe the proper use of technology is a fundamental asset that can bolster the revenue of a golf course and will continue to rail against firms that are compromising the ability of golf course owners to properly manage.

That is my thought. What is yours? Comment below. Note that Jared Williams, Managing Director of the Tee Time Coalition, wrote me after this blog was published and requested the following be added:

“Can you include a quick disclaimer/point of clarification in your article.

The official release of this market sentiment study will come from The Tee Time Coalition.

This is only a portion of the results. The data on Tee Time distributors is missing as this only highlights the market sentiment towards software companies. Even then, not every software company that we collected data on is shown in this report.

Additionally, all data, analysis, scores, and comments associated with companies comes directly from B2Binternational, which conducted the study and/or reflects the sentiment and comments of golf course owners, operators, and PGA professional.

The NGCOA, The PGA of America, and the Tee Time Coalition has yet to issue any scores or make any independent objective analysis regarding these companies. That will take place in the next survey we conduct, which takes a more objective approach to how all of these companies are adhering to the NGCOA guidelines and Tee Time Coalition standards.”

It was our pleasure to provide this additional information.