Simplifying the flow and storage of data is a fundamental challenge for any organization seeking to optimize their digital operations. Outside the sports industry, major manufacturers and retail companies adopt enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions to help manage the capture and processing of data leveraged from the sale and distribution of products, as well as the management of the company’s finances.
This is also the case for the digitalization of sports properties integrating new technologies into their digital frameworks. As rights holders seek to improve the digital fan experience, including the implementation of customer-facing, mobile-supported, fan-engagement platforms, ERP providers are often called upon to help the organization manage its product/service integration and automate the operational processes and data journeys they entail.
Cited in our latest 2023 Digital Trends in the Sports Industry report, a survey carried out by Panorama Consulting Group (PCG) across multiple industries found that three in four (74.8 percent) organizations quantify productivity and efficiency as an expected benefit of ERP, followed by a reduction to IT maintenance costs (62.6 percent), operating and labor costs (50.4 percent), and customer experience (CX) improvements (58.8 percent).
By comparison, only four in ten (42.7 percent) identify access to real-time data as a benefit of ERP. This is indicative of the challenges of data disparity inside organizations where there are too many services working in tandem and may prove to be counterintuitive if technology adoption is having a negative impact on the employee experience (EX).
Wherever there is modernization, complexity often follows. Therefore, while the integration of digital applications (and the software solutions to support them) is a natural step for sports entities undergoing digital transformation, scaling an organization’s digital footprint also puts the entity at risk of creating data silos that disrupt dataflow, whereby data complexity can damage operational efficiency and the company’s bottom line, as well as the rights holder’s understanding of the fan journey via its customer-facing platforms.
“Nowadays, data isn’t the challenge anymore – we have the technologies and software solutions to be able to manage Big Data, and even the disparity of unstructured data,” says Henri Saab, Solution Architect at N3XT Sports and for Lausanne-based digital consulting firm, TowardsChange. “Therefore, it’s important for sports organizations to simplify their data framework into a single system. It doesn’t matter what you want to do – whether it’s to launch a mobile application or perhaps a marketing portal or to automate your business processes – a centralized, modernized system allows you to do all of that, and more, while optimizing employee productivity.”
CHANGE MANAGEMENT ONGOING CHALLENGE FOR SPORTS EXECUTIVES
Focusing on the individual benefits of a digital product and overlooking their impact on the entire organization and ecosystem will only benefit the organization in the short-term. In order to maximize the use of data and to avoid adopting solutions that may impact the organization further along the line, Saab identifies three aspects of an organization that executives must consider before adopting technology solutions into its digital ecosystem:
- Change management maturity is generally “very low” in sports business, so sports properties should work to understand how technologies will serve the EX.
- Data complexity can be damaging to operational efficiency and the bottom-line, and therefore means sports organizations can save on costs by simplifying their infrastructure.
- Speed to market is comparatively higher in the sports industry, placing organizations in a unique position for innovation. Quality data governance will help scale a digital inventory that serves customer demand.
“Sports organizations will often adopt technologies for individual needs or business objectives and not whether they add value to the business,” Saab continues. “As a result, they end up selecting different cloud-based solutions aligned to their different departments. By taking this approach, sports organizations are prone to creating complex digital architectures, based on multiple data sources, and contribute to their own data disparity.
“The necessary step for sports organizations to take is to really simplify their digital ecosystem. This places more onus on building a customer relationship management (CRM) capability that ensures data is extremely well located, and a foundation for scaling digital acumen and to meet one’s future technology needs without damaging dataflow.”
DATA SIMPLICITY CREATES FLEXIBLE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS
Having identified duplicated datasets and data silos within its organization, Spanish football club Celta de Vigo is among several elite sports clubs to partner with ERP provider Microsoft Dynamic NAV to unify its resources and automate processes within a modern management system. This arrangement covers the management of the club’s finances and information about its members, subscribers, and customers, highlighting how ERP adoption helps streamline its administrative efforts in order to better understand customer behavior. Celta de Vigo also adopts LS Retail, a Microsoft Dynamics solution, that unifies the club’s sales channels into a single system, providing employee accountability and channel management, while also managing product orders and distribution.
Elsewhere, in human resources management, Atos helps the International Olympic Committee (IOC) manage staff, assign tasks, control costs, increase productivity and minimize compliance risks in one integrated system. This centralized, cloud-based Workforce Management System is among a suite of applications within the Olympic Management System (OMS), which also includes: the IOC’s Volunteer Portal, used for managing volunteer applications; the Advanced Access Control System (AACS) for facial recognition; and applications dedicated to athlete accreditation, voting, and event qualification.
“Whether they are looking for quick changes, or a long-term overhaul of the rights holder’s data capability, the simplification of data frameworks helps to both cut out unnecessary operational costs and create a flexible ecosystem for implementing digital products that work together,” says Mounir Zok, N3XT Sports Chief Executive (CEO). “In turn, this makes it easier for the organization to sustain customer and stakeholder relationships via a centralized system, and build the personalized, digital experiences that the modern sports fan craves and puts the industry at the cutting edge of innovation today.”
WHAT’S N3XT?
Data transformation is the conversion of data into an optimal, usable format and presents a central theme within the sports industry’s digitalization. Without proper guidance, there remains a risk, however, of organizations adopting too many services into one ecosystem, and is often the cause of data disparity.
Complex ecosystems are prone to higher operations costs, a greater need for change management, weaker employee retention, and diminished customer service. By taking the step to simplify their digital ecosystem, sports organizations ensure that datasets are extremely well located and therefore help improve the EX in order to reduce operational costs and better manage the fan/customer experience.
Our team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and implement digital 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 optimize your technological infrastructure, 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.