ARM: the name, and why we built it.

Players are paying for a service

People who play community sport are paying for a service. Subs, match fees, kit. That money buys a routine of exercise, a safe environment to play in, and a social life. Our players are customers, and they deserve a well-run, well-organised club in return.

That isn't a call to turn clubs into businesses. Community sport runs on goodwill, and it should. But goodwill isn't the same thing as organisation, and a player who's paid their subs is owed the second one as much as the first.

The people delivering it are volunteers

The people expected to deliver most of that service are volunteers and time-poor coaches. Nobody coaches because they love admin. They coach for the love of the game, to give back, to help kids, to be an active parent.

Where the two truths collide

The club owes a professional standard of service, and the people providing it are giving up their evenings for free.

Most clubs resolve that collision the only way they can, by asking the volunteers for more. More nights, more chasing, more goodwill. It works right up until the person carrying it stops.

We think there's another way to close that gap: make the service cheaper to deliver, rather than asking for more of the person delivering it. Give a coach back the hours, and the standard of experience a player gets stops depending on how much of their life one volunteer is willing to give up.

Where the name came from

That's where Athlete Relationship Management came from. We wanted the Rolodex of players. The ability to pick a squad and remember your notes on every player. To track minutes and caps.

The test every feature has to pass

Every feature we release gets measured against those two ideas.

That's the standard we're holding ourselves to as we keep building. Because the goal was never software. It was a club that remembers you.