Virtually every greenkeeper collects data or records about what they do on the golf course. Without good record keeping skills our jobs would be a lot harder than they already are. When I first became a superintendent I kept records for fertilizer and pesticide applications, equipment maintenance, and equipment use.
These were ‘dumb’ records taken on paper and were useful for not much else other than seeing what we did. If I was really ambitious I could transcribe the data collected on these spreadsheets to figure out how much nitrogen I applied each year, how many hours we spent mowing rough, or how much money we spent maintaining our greens mower. This data analysis took a lot of time and was usually done during the off-season. While these records were useful over the long run, they didn’t allow me to make educated decisions in the short term.
Here’s the thing about greenkeeping. It’s done outdoors and no two years are the same. Greenkeepers must adapt to the weather to provide golfers with good playing conditions while staying on budget. If we base all our practices on what we did in the past we will often be caught off guard and things will never work out as well as they could. As I explained in my last article, greenkeepers use a lot of tools to make agronomic decisions during the season. While we can make casual observations and adjust on the fly, if we can collect good, meaningful data, and have it instantly analyzed for our consumption, we can make precise, educated decisions in order to achieve the results that are required by today’s golfer.
In today’s high tech world there are many data collection tools available for turfgrass managers. Some software solutions focus on employee management, others on budgeting , and a rare few focus on agronomics. With so many options out there it’s easy to become overwhelmed. Which software solution is right for you?
As someone who works at a low budget course, I struggled to find a solution that suited my operation. Often they were too costly or didn’t have the features that were important to me. Setting up a pre-paid data management system takes a LOT of time and effort and this is all a waste of time if, in the end, you end up not using it. It’s also worth knowing who owns the data that you put into a piece of software. What happens to that data if the company goes out of business?
For me, I needed a solution that was simple and free and that allowed me to analyze my data the way I wanted to. I do some crazy things at my course (count individual spots of disease to track infection rate), so being able to have full control of what I was collecting was important. I also needed a way to analyze this data instantly and display it so that I could make decisions in real-time.
This solution presented itself to me in 2011 as Google Docs. Google Docs is a cloud-based productivity suite that allows users to keep all their files online and accessible anywhere that has an internet connection, including your phone. It’s free and you can easily export your data to Excel if you ever decide you don’t like Google. It also allowed me to keep private data private and easily share data that I wanted to share. You can allow staff to only add data without seeing the data, or you can give your assistants the ability to edit the data. The best thing is that there is only one copy online, so whenever an edit is made, it is made for everyone that the document is shared with. No more multiple copies of one document.
One of the best features for me was the ability to add data to a spreadsheet with an online form. I could embed a form on my phone’s home screen and add data directly to a spreadsheet (which we are all familiar with) while out in the field. If data collection isn’t easy, you won’t do it, and if you don’t do it, the data will not be very useful. Step 1 is making data collection easy and Google forms does that.
This was, and has been, a huge step up for a low budget golf course operation such as mine. With a little elbow grease I had access to data collection and analytics that only the highest budget courses had in the past. If you think about it, it is the low budget courses that have the most to gain because with such low margins for profit, they will benefit more from increased efficiency and reduced waste.
I was able to take it another step further this past winter when I learned some basic computer programming, which allowed me to pull in real-time weather data to combine all my relevant data into one HUD (Heads Up Display). Now I had weather models and statistics presented side by side with the data we collected, and this gives me all the information in one place so that I can make the best decision right now. Step 2 is having the data instantly analyzed and present in one easy to access place.
Once you have access to decision making data it can become quite overwhelming, and that’s why I think the last bit of advice I can share about data collection is that it’s important to audit what you do collect and what you don’t collect each year. Was the time spent collecting that data worth it? Did it actually save you time and money or improve course conditions? If not, then you should stop wasting your time collecting useless information. Step 3 is stop collecting useless data.
While it has never been easier to get high tech and free productivity tools on a golf course, it is still quite intimidating for a lot of us. Being someone who is gifted in this sort of stuff, and combining the ability to easily share documents on Google Sheets, you can go to my website at http://www.turfhacker.com/p/jasons-productivity-file.html to get a copy of all my data collection sheets for free. For some of the more advanced stuff contact me on twitter for some help @pendersuper.
