CASE STUDY
How Rowing New Zealand replaced spreadsheet chaos with one system
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Rowing New Zealand is the national governing body for the sport, supporting everyone from secondary schools and clubs to masters, universities, and the high performance program.
The problem: a nomination process built out of five different tools
“Before Row New Zealand started working with CrewLAB, our nomination and selection process was a nightmare. It was spreadsheet chaos. We used to have to have the athletes use a lot of different forms — Survey Monkey, Google Forms. We were using Excel spreadsheets and there was data everywhere, and the athletes had to put repetitive information in all the time and it was cumbersome.”
The challenges
Before CrewLAB, getting an athlete from “I want to be considered for a team” to “what’s the training plan” ran through a patchwork of unconnected tools.
Remote Training
With athletes training in different locations, staying connected and aligned was a major challenge. Communication and oversight were tough to maintain.
Nomination data lived in different places
Depending on which tool a club or region happened to use, so pulling it together for selectors meant manually reassembling spreadsheets.
Limited Engagement
Coaches and athletes couldn’t always see what was happening across the system. That made it harder to drive motivation, build culture, and stay truly connected.
Our solution
Rowing New Zealand’s approach with CrewLAB started narrow, with the piece of admin that hurt the most, and expanded from there.
A single nomination form
Instead of each region or squad running its own form, Rowing New Zealand now sends one link to all athletes nominating for a team. Everyone submits into the same system, in the same format.
Filtering replaces manual sorting
All 500-plus nominations land in one place, but Janey can filter and sort that pool to hand each selector only what’s relevant to them.
One Home for Data
Every athlete now has a searchable profile, complete with performance history, photos, videos, and training logs. All built to support long-term development.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
500+ nominations managed in a single system, filtered by squad so each selector sees only their relevant pool.
Everyone followed the same training plan and could easily connect with coaches through CrewLAB.
Engagement increased from year one to year two, rather than dropping off after initial rollout — visible in both the U19 and U22 squads.
Coaches gained cross-region visibility into training and accountability, despite squads training in separate towns.
“It’s a great way for the coaches to see who is doing the work. Coaches are able to plug in the training programs, and athletes can log their workouts against it. It’s a really effective tool for communication and pulling the whole thing together for a team.”