Our customers' success is built on trust. Building trust requires a robust communication plan, transparency to the process, and advance notice to our customers when products need to be retired.  

ClubReady's goal is to apply our resources to areas that will add the most value for customers. This may require retiring, or sunsetting,  features that are consuming resources while delivering low value to customers or features that provide value to a limited number of customers.

 Part of maintaining a healthy application is to review features that have been added to the system, checking to see: 

• Do customers utilize the features included in ClubReady?
• Does a feature continue to add value to the platform greater than the costs associated with maintaining the feature?
• Are there better alternatives outside of the ClubReady system?
• Are there additional enhancements that could be made to a feature to make it worth while to keep in the platform?
• Does a feature fit the mission/vision for the ClubReady platform?

We understand feature retirement may cause temporary dislocation for some customers. We believe it allows us to best serve our customer and partner community in the long run by allowing us to focus our resources on the highest priorities.
 
When we decide to retire a feature set or product, we have an established a process that includes analysis of product usage information, analyzing support tickets and feedback, and direct conversations with customers.

To improve our process, avoid surprises, and to build trust, we have updated our core principles for retiring products and features. When we retire a feature, our goal is to provide:

• Advance Notice: Written notice to system administrators, 6 - 12 months before functionality is retired, and periodic reminders prior to the retirement date.
• Recommended Alternative: Suggestion of new CR features, Partners, or other 3rd parties that provide an alternative to the retired capability. 
• Uninterrupted Support: Continued critical issue support for features until the retirement date. 

Occasionally, we may need to accelerate the sunset of a product or feature set due to:

• Essential Changes: Changes that are necessary or appropriate to protect the integrity of our solution. This includes critical performance, security, or other necessary updates. In these cases, it is important that those changes occur as quickly as possible. We will communicate with customers transparently with as much advance notice as possible in these situations.
• Partner Integrations: Functionality that integrates with third-party or partner software may need to be retired due to the third-party changes. In these situations, the pace of the retirement will be out of our control, although we will still strive to provide as much advance notice as possible.

In all cases, we will first strive for upfront and transparent communication.  When we have completed our analysis and are ready to announce a retirement, we will follow this process:

• Internal announcement and one week comment period
• Initial announcement of retirement plan through site announcements
• Start responding and closing any open tickets/requests that will not be addressed or need to be notified of the retirement
• Quarterly updates of all retirement plans to Knowledgebase articles, including alternatives and timing as plans are finalized
• Detailed Knowledgebase articles as needed for each feature/product
• Targeted messages where needed to specific customers