April 1, 2019 – Moorestown, NJ – RunSignup is pleased to announce the coming availability of the RunSignup WRM – the Race Weather App. The new app is expected to provide race directors with the power of Weather Relationship Management, or WRM. In the fully released version, expected April 1, 2020, the app will allow for setting the following parameters:
- Temperature 50 degrees and above
- Humidity
- Cloud Cover %
- Heat Index
There will be an advanced version available for $0.50 per participant that will allow for special events:
- Freezing temperatures
- Night time moon phases
“Our customers have been so pleased with our CRM, we asked ourselves what can we give them next?” said Bob Bickel, RunSignup Founder and CEO.
“Bob came to me and said how can we make the race day experience better,” said James Harris, RaceJoy creator and CTO of Race Day Technology at RunSignup. “Our team thought RaceDay Scoring, RaceJoy and the rest of the RaceDay Suite was pretty complete until we really started thinking about this.”
“We surveyed customers and found a common thread,” said Johanna Goode, RunSignup Marketing Lead. “Runners appreciate a cool, dry day. Cyclists don’t like wet roads. Triathletes want calm winds. Race Directors report that attendance is up when the weather is good. Then it hit us – Weather Relationship Management!”
The app is not expected to be fully released until April 1, 2020, but early version are available. The key technology in the first early release will be based on the company’s existing work with the Amazon Cloud Services.
“We are very heavily reliant on the Amazon Cloud currently, so it made sense to start there,” said Eric Cone, VP of Strategic Business. “I’ve been prototyping some stuff on Microsoft Azure, but it is a little early if we can make blue skies out of Azure.”
RunSignup’s WRM App relies on advanced machine learning and pattern recognition. We use serverless Amazon Machine Learning, Lambda, Sagemaker and new Forecast services infrastructure as well as other proprietary technology to analyze years of race registration and weather data we collected in our annual RaceTrends report.
“Our customers trust us,” said Matt Avery, RaceDay Product Manager. “They saw us steadily release early versions of the RaceDay Scoring app and then we went live in production less than one year after the first early version. Hopefully we will have the full WRM functionality by April 1, 2020 because I know a lot of the spring races would really like the sun option.”
Early versions of the app are available on iPhone only. And they only work to create clouds in the Beta 0.1 version. Please send applications to fool@runsignup.com
