Cologne Timing manages its registration tablets for sporting events thanks to Cortado MDM.
How fast was I? How did I place? Anyone taking part in a running event wants to see their results as soon as possible after crossing the finish line. Professional timekeeping and results presentation at sporting events is exactly what Cologne Timing specializes in. The company provides timekeeping services for many running events as well as mountain bike and triathlon events throughout Germany. Cologne Timing ensures that event organizers no longer must worry about timekeeping. Timing is done either with flat passive transponders glued to the back of the start numbers or with closed active transponders for events with higher speeds and which may involve swimming. For timing, cologne timing uses technology by Race Result.
When an event takes place, sports lovers often want to register on the spot. Previously, this was a time-consuming process. Race participants would hand in their completed registration forms at the late registration counter. These forms then passed through several hands, for example, assistants, who typed in the data. With the onset of the covid pandemic at the beginning of 2020, this was too risky for André Rinke, technical manager at Cologne Timing. He was concerned that the virus would spread by passing on the forms. In addition, there was an enormous amount of work involved in typing in the data.
An assistant from Cologne Timing team entered the handwritten participant data into the input template on a PC. “That took up a lot of work time,” recalls André Rinke. So, it was clear to the IT expert that he needed a mobile device management system. Researching online, he came across Cortado MDM. With the help of tutorial videos, he quickly and easily got five Android tablets up and running.
The five 13-inch Hannspree Android tablets currently in use are managed via Cortado MDM’s management console. They are then available on site so that race participants can register themselves in the system directly thanks to kiosk mode. The days of paper forms are over, and assistants can devote themselves to other tasks.
“We’re always looking to improve services or expand them in such a way that they have an advantage for the organizers,” says André Rinke. For example, Cologne Timing no longer prints the transponders before the race and sends them to the participants. Too many participants came to the competition and had forgotten the number or even thrown it away. As a result, the transponders had to be reprinted.
In the meantime, participant numbers are printed out on-site, and transponders, which are quite expensive according to André Rinke, are also attached on-site with Chip2Go. He continues by saying “That saves money. All supported by Race Result, which provides many solutions as web applications.”
With Cortado MDM, says André Rinke, he can check the status quo of the devices and always knows what needs to be updated. He can then trigger this update automatically without having to pick up the devices individually. He has set rights so that the runners who log in with the tablet can only use the login screen. It is not possible for them to access the internet, for example.
André Rinke sums up by saying,
With the Cortado solution and the tablets, I save time and effort when managing the devices. And we don’t need employees dealing with data entry or an extra tent where they manually type in late registrations.