Building a single source of truth | How cloud-data extraction generates business value

Customer data acquisition is only as useful as an organization’s ability to turn customer data into business value. How sports properties draw value (and meaning) from fan data depends on several defining factors – including, namely, the rights holder’s business objectives and exploring ways that fan intelligence can help the organization meet them, in time and to budget, as part of its digital transformation journey. 

During the initial digital-assessment phase, it is important to appreciate the different types of services required for making this a reality. This not only requires a robust customer relationship management (CRM) solution, but also establishing a digital framework that enables employees to easily access, analyze, and distribute data learnings, and to extract disparate types of data from multiple sources, without causing internal conflicts. 

The extraction and transfer of data relies upon a well-oiled, connected ecosystem. Done effectively, the act of building the perfect combination of services will help optimize both the management and movement of customer data between stakeholders while, at the same time, minimizing costly delays associated with disjointed ecosystems. Dismantling data silos is an important step for organizations to take during their pursuit for operational efficacy. 

According to research carried out by Treasure Data, close to two in five (38 percent) companies identify that data sourced throughout their customer journey is siloed, while three in ten (28 percent) say that the customer journey is disjointed. By way of example, when the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) partnered with N3XT Sports, Maheta Molango, the PFA’s Chief Executive (CEO), said that the decision to prioritize digital transformation within the footballers’ union was driven by its ambition “to provide its members with a modern, data-driven service” by digitizing heavily paper-based data silos.

In order to achieve its goal, the PFA’s digitalization project involved an in-depth assessment of existing PFA data points to identify areas of the organization where the introduction of digital and data-management solutions could, in effect, help improve its administrative process. This included the delivery of a digital framework that: (1) introduced a CRM database that offers the PFA an instant, 360° overview of its members; (2) enables the use of data dashboards to make the act of accessing and extracting PFA member data more efficient; and (3) provides an educational pathway and raises the digital literacy of the PFA workforce.

“Our work with the PFA, among a diverse client portfolio, provides a unique example for how the digitalization of a sports organization, and the digitization of its customer data, can serve a property’s internal operations,” explains Antonío Gonçalves, Junior Consultant at N3XT Sports. “Digital transformation will never be the same for any organization, offering the unique opportunity to adapt a digital framework that connects different types of data across every department and stakeholder via a single source of truth. 

“Therefore, assessing the digital tools and software solutions that support the flow of data is just as important as the means with which fan and operational data are collected in the first instance and requires a data hub capable of connecting the complete flow data, from the point of collection, through to the point of distribution.” 

When analyzing the digital infrastructure of data-centric sports organizations, they all share a common factor. “For industry benchmarks, cloud computing is shaping how sport is played on the field and how it is run off it,” according to Gonçalves. “Whether you are a major league leveraging data to enhance the fan experience, or a sports team empowering employees within the organization, how you optimize the flow of data makes all the difference.”

This process – also known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) – supports organizations on multiple fronts, including: (1) the reduction of administrative costs incurred by a business; (2) positive returns of investment via raised productivity; and (3) the ability to recognize areas where the organization can innovate. According to research, close to two-thirds of companies worldwide (64 percent) are planning to implement ERP within three years.

In the meantime, more than half (53 percent) of IT executives consider ERP to be a priority for their business, alongside CRM adoption, and 50 percent of organizations have already begun their ERP implementation process. There are several examples for how digital transformation, including the integration of ERP and cloud-computing software, is changing the way sports entities manage fan and stakeholder data; covering ticketing, ecommerce, and the digital fan experience, as well as administrative tasks such as stock management, budgeting, and automated financial reporting.

1. Spanish football body LaLiga places focus on building a 360° fan profile. In order to do this, the organization developed a Single Customer View platform, powered by cloud-computing platform Microsoft Azure, to help its clubs embrace data. “Instead of investing years and years in building all this infrastructure and investing a lot of money on it, what we offer clubs is almost a plug-and-play functionality,” explains Olivia Archanco, Consumer Strategy Director for LaLiga Tech, the league’s technology affiliate. “We are working to help the digitalization process so that we can reduce the gap between the big clubs and the rest.”
2. Data management is being leveraged to enhance New Zealand Rugby’s (NZR) employee experience. The national rugby union announced in May a multi-year partnership with SAP to ‘power and accelerate’ its digital transformation ‘across all areas of the business’. This involves a digital hub formed of SAP solutions, while ‘establishing a single source of HR data … to elevate the employee experience and empower employees to achieve their full potential’. “NZR is undertaking a large digital transformation which really needs the support and expertise of a global technology organization…” explains Angela Nash, NZR’s Chief Information and Technology Officers, “…working with NZR across all key platforms to review, enhance and enable us to provide technology systems that ensure we are the best, both on and off the field.”
3. The National Basketball Association (NBA) is turning its new-look NBA App into a single source of truth. By “combining data from the game with insights from fans”, Ken DeGennaro, the NBA’s Senior Vice President (SVP) of Media Operations and Technology, says that the NBA App “will allow us to build engaging content and deliver experiences you can’t get anywhere else”. The NBA adopted Microsoft Azure to aggregate data using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning software” adding: “The ability of Azure to receive very high-quality feeds is paramount for us as stewards of the game and the fan experience. Those fundamentals are things that have been enabled via Azure and its partner network for the NBA to deliver the best experience to fans.”

Finding a digital transformation partner is an important step for sports organizations seeking to optimize the management of their data and in search for the right cloud-software solutions.  According to research carried out by Finances Online, close to four in five companies (78 percent), across all industries, adopt a consultant to navigate their ERP strategy, while the vast majority (90 percent) want advice for ERP implementation. 

Within the sports industry, there are several stages to developing and integrating a digital strategy that promotes connected data collection and data governance. However, just as we see in other industry sectors such as manufacturing and finance, ERP and cloud computing services are widely used by companies seeking to consolidate the extraction and transfer of data throughout the organization, contributing to an eight percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the ERP software market, which is set to surpass US$181.5 billion in value by 2023. 

“Digital transformation is a journey, not a destination,” Gonçalves explains. “Just as we look at the evolution of a business, digitalization is an ongoing process. For those considering what their next step should be in their evolution, they must first understand how their existing digital infrastructure serves their business objectives and how data flows through the organization. Transformation won’t be achieved overnight, but a digital roadmap offers an organization clear direction for innovation and the foundations to scale.”

Our team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and implement digital and data strategies across a multitude of sports properties at federation level, competition level, and club level. To learn more about how digital transformation can support the growth of your organization and how to implement a data strategy, fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch. Our goal is to drive the digitalization of the sports industry and our clients.