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How National Western Stock Show Stays on Track ‘Til the Cows Come Home

Widely regarded as the Super Bowl of livestock shows, the scale of National Western is rivaled only by its complexity. When the iconic event with 113 years of history needed to modernize processes, they called on Resultant to help. The end result? A robust, scalable, customizable solution: Exhibitor’s Corner.

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Setting the Stage

The National Western Stock Show is big. Over 12,000 head of livestock big. Twenty-six rodeos in sixteen days big. 700-plus visitors and a $130 million economic impact big.

Widely regarded as the Super Bowl of livestock shows, the scale of National Western is rivaled only by its complexity. When the iconic event with 113 years of history needed to modernize processes, they called on Resultant to help. The end result? A robust, scalable, customizable solution: Exhibitor’s Corner.

Exhibitor’s Corner makes for a better exhibitor and staff experience and thereby helps further the Western Stock Show Association mission to provide more opportunities for agricultural education and solutions.

An entry management system keeps track of livestock shows' complicated variables.

National Western consists of two main umbrella shows: Open, in which competitions are mainly run by breed associations, and Junior Market, run by the Western Stock Show Association (WSSA). Only junior participants are eligible for Junior Market competitions, but that’s the simple part.

Every event has its own entry requirements, eligibility protocols, fees, procedures, criteria, and classifications.

  • Department (species)
  • Division (breed)
  • Category (sex and/or other distinguishing animal features)
  • Class (varying by number of entries, classes are often split by date of birth and/or weight)
  • Shows are the final groupings of competitors after all other filters are applied

Then there are outlier competitions, like the Junior Market Swine Draw. Since Junior Market is the largest show in the United States for participants in this age group, young swineherds across the country vie for the chance to enter their best pigs. There are far more applicants than spots available; hence, the Swine Draw—a competition before the competition. If chosen, each entrant can show up to four animals.

About the Client

The National Western Stock Show (NWSS) is the premier livestock, rodeo, and horse show in the nation, serving agricultural producers and consumers throughout the world. NWSS is charitable organization providing education in agriculture, including college and graduate-level scholarships in agriculture and veterinary medicine for practice in rural areas.

Outcomes

  • Customizable set up for every department, division, category, and class
  • Flexible and user-friendly registration
  • Robust reporting and data analysis
  • Streamlined event check-in
  • Real-time event management and updates (location changes, judging, and more)
  • Simple and efficient event wrap-up and payouts to winners

Streamlining processes to prevent a real goat rodeo

Paper-based processes or simple entry management systems that aren’t robust enough to handle all the variables of large-scale shows create a lot of error, confusion, and bad data. This leads to a time-consuming effort for the army of volunteers required to execute them. Plus, exhibitors can be left with a bad experience if the entry process doesn’t meet their needs. The time frame for checking in exhibitors (and their not-so-small entries) is extraordinarily short.

National Western wanted to streamline and simplify processes and needed one place to store all their information, tie data points together, and create reports. A few technology solutions are on the market today for livestock exhibits, but none of them can scale to meet the complexities of the National Western Stock Show. From the beginning, we built Exhibitor’s Corner to be fully customizable, knowing that every livestock show and state fair has its own unique requirements.

Managing each show's particular complexities

For National Western Stock Show, the intricacies of livestock classifications, criteria, and showcase opportunities are more in-depth than at any other event in the country.

  • Every event and category has its own rules, requirements, and entry fees.
  • Competitions range from the traditional—breeding, market, and showmanship—to those aimed at recreation and companionship, like cattle- and sheepdog competitions.
  • Livestock classifications include numerous poultry, swine, and sheep breeds; specialty breeds like alpaca, yak, and bison; twenty-five categories for different breeds of cattle; and everything in between.
  • Each Junior Market entry requires a DNA test; WSSA must track the test-kit purchaser to the test result to the entry to ensure that the animal entered is the animal shown.
  • Some contests operate with entirely different criteria. During judging contests, teams compete on their abilities to properly evaluate livestock. The Catch-a-Calf competition has young agriculture enthusiasts attempting to catch a calf for the right to raise it and bring it to next year’s market.

Exhibitor's Corner Helps NWSS Simplify Every Event Phase

With these and other benefits, Exhibitor’s Corner has given a massive efficiency boost to the operations of the National Western Stock Show that ultimately brings cost savings and will encourage more exhibitors in the future.

Set up

Exhibitor’s Corner is customizable from the beginning. Every department, division, category, and class can be expanded, modified, or split, and each can have its own stipulations for exhibitor limits, qualifiers, dates, entry fees, and any customizable field.

Exhibitor Registration

With one account, an exhibitor can manage entries for the entire family or create entries across their organization. Families—or farms—can easily enter multiple exhibitions, pay the correct fees, review previous entries, and access their entry packet, all from one place. The system is intuitive to users, assigns exhibitor numbers, and can securely collect payout information. Exhibitor’s Corner can also interface with the ticket provider to generate tickets, parking passes, loading dock assignments, and associated QR codes.

Reporting

A centralized database exponentially reduces participant process management. Customizable by department, data can be sorted and filtered in every way, is archived, and delivers results in CSV and XLSX formats for further analysis.

Event Check-in

The one-screen, tablet-friendly design compatible with RFID scanners allows staff to move freely. They can instantaneously access current registration information and more efficiently devote their time to participants according to where they stand in the process.

Event Management

Generate show programs, split classes as needed, and publicly display judging and placing results in real time. As events progress, the centralized database enables staff members to pull reports, view show programs, and track participant placement for each competition. The messaging function can send show programs, location changes, and results directly to participants.

Event Wrap-up

Exhibitor’s Corner easily interfaces with payment and accounting services to pay out winners. National Western elected to collect every exhibitor’s W-9 form at entry rather than needing to follow up with winners after results were in, streamlining the payment process significantly.

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