The two organizations formed a strategic alliance to address the need and selected Advanced Solutions International's iMIS as their Web-based solution for its flexibility and breadth of service offerings. Though members are charged an annual fee to access the site, Fowler says SportNet is still an economical way for all Australian sports associations to participate in an e-community and have the benefit of using iMIS as part of their own service to their members. With iMIS , associations can use templates to customize their own Web pages to display results, news, player profiles, and more. This enables clubs with similar focuses to exchange news, information and advice. Each sport has its own intranet database, as well as its own secure area within SportNet to house club member information, through the iMIS system.
Associations can view all member details from contact information to activity history.
They can also track and update team information such as coaches, team members, and trainers. Cycling Australia staff and its participating state and local associations are able to get to their iMIS database through the Internet. This provides access to association information for traveling staff, remote association offices, members, and the general public with appropriate security restrictions. This is exciting for us because it means if we were at a cycling race where a record was broken, we could update the record and other racing results in the database on-site for all SportNet members across the entire Australian sporting community to see, said Ron Bonham of Cycling Australia. This system has the potential to do more for the promotion of cycling in Australia than any other single initiative in the history of the sport.