Sport’s Digital Future

Martin Sheppard sees that digital transformation is key to future sporting success on and off the fi eld

With sport consumption through participation, fan engagement, stakeholder and sponsor relationships being challenged to continually evolve and pivot, the current challenges of COVID-19 have placed greater strain on sports organisations, emphasising the need to explore opportunities to fast track generational changes.

National sporting organisations (NSOs), state sporting associations (SSAs), commercial sports clubs and local associations are doing this not only to survive, but also to adapt and invest in ways to do things better to stay relevant, to expand, and to meet the changing needs of consumers.

With digital solutions seen as a potential panacea, global leaders such as Microsoft are at the forefront of this fundamental shift. Now recognised as the most advanced supplier of artificial intelligence and machine learning capability, they are sharing their insights to help businesses maximise performance. It was only a matter of time before the sports sector could embrace these solutions.

However, despite having reduced revenue and resources, organisations are expected to deliver the same or more than before. Some sports may be grasping at technology to make their jobs easier in what they believe to be key areas of their business and specific priorities, as opposed to a whole of business approach. All technology will do in these circumstances is provide the same answer quicker. The imperative must be for sports organisations to understand the holistic business challenges and what transformation is needed.

The commitment to business transformation must start before the technology is introduced. Technology is an enabler that needs purpose. It is not the reason to change our business processes to meet the technology solution. Successful transformation can deliver profound, organisationwide improvements to business efficiency, staff and customer experiences with the organisations’ overarching success and sustainability as the outcome. Business transformation is far more than quality improvements in one key area, such as marketing, communications, or finance or HR. It is the commitment to holistically embrace a customer-centric approach across all facets of the business.

Change management within organisations is now relatively common. Capability and capacity enhancement within sports organisations can mean greater internal productivity and enhanced external stakeholder satisfaction. Digital transformation embraces the smarts of technology to provide the information infrastructure backbone, enabling continuously improving engagement with customers, stakeholders and sponsors. The technology should provide structure and support, to make better, faster, more impactful decisions to be more effective and efficient in coping with the challenges and opportunities. Digital transformation in not a trade-off, it forms a virtuous circle, enabling organisations to do far more with far

less, while delivering ever-improving outcomes for the sports we are all so passionate about.

In sectors such as retail fitness, we have seen that the most successful companies, not only have customer membership systems and databases for day-to-day functions, they also embrace it as their greatest and most important asset. The capacity to utilise information to make evidence-based decisions with the available insights is fundamental to their success. With limited capacity and resources within organisations, sport would also benefit from having these insights autonomously.

If an NSO invested in a centralised resource integrated for use by state-based organisations, it removes the need for them to create their own versions across the country and miss out on significant communication, sponsorship and efficiency outcomes.

The bigger the data lake, the greater the depth of insight that can be achieved, enabling the NSO a complete data overview. This enables baseline and improvement measurement against targeted outcomes. Better data enables more effective advocacy for government and other assistance, along with providing greater leverage with sponsors and commercial partners. It also delivers a larger communication platform, through the media generating opportunity for greater revenue and reduced costs.

There is further potential for a single ‘Technological Backbone’ enabling data from all sports to be brought together into an aligned platform. The technical backbone could agitate all data into the backbone of the digital platform into a credible, easy to use and pertinent management information to guide decision making.

The significant challenge for any organisation is to truly understand who their customers are, their needs and expectations. Without this we cannot correctly mould the product to suit them. In most businesses, this is difficult, but more so for sport: •In addition to ‘known’ customers (such as registered participants, members, stakeholders and sponsors) there are many more unknown customers, who participate without the organisation knowing anything about them, as there are no identified contact or transactions with them; •The different sport governance models impact on the touch points for customers and the information that needs to be held; •Lack of central repository for the customer experience - so they may have several different experiences depending on what part of the organisation they connect with; and •NSOs, SSAs and local sport associations may all have different databases, complicating communications with mixed messages to your customer base.

This normally means that there are missing ‘Customer Centric’ strategies that could bring success to the sport. Sport some may say is ‘dragging the chain’ when it comes to embracing technology to address this issue. Creating and maintaining fulfilling, personally relevant customer experience for the entire customer lifecycle needs to be addressed as part of improvements in the way that sport does business. The embrace of technology allows the organisation to continuously monitor strategies, initiatives and tactics in real time allowing them to be agile and pivot as they learn.

Once the vision for the business transformation is agreed with all internal stakeholders then the technology should be explored to support or even fast track to a more customercentric focus.

The results can be significant. If there is a customer-centric focus for the business, then the technology needs to ensure that there is a single database working as the backbone of the business in everything that the organisation does.

The organisation then needs to work out how the whole of the business is going to interact with the database or CRM backbone. This should assist in the refocusing of the normal multitude of information, records, and data that sports organisations normally have which work in isolation or are disparate and often on different platforms with multiple databases.

Whether the technology is externally focused (websites, ticketing, venue bookings, enrolments etc) or internally focused (finance, human resources, athlete databases, Microsoft office etc.) they often don’t interact. The result is often duplicated records, wasted time and lost opportunities that could have a large, long-term effect.

There needs to be considered thought on a platform that brings all of the internal systems and externally focused interactions with the community, customers and stakeholders together, in a manner that actually assists the organisation run their business better. This thought process is normally referred to as Business Transformation and when technology is embraced to underpin this business realignment - Digital Transformation.

Conference calls became common business practice through 2020.

Digital technology is unlocking unprecedented opportunities for growth in many areas. It will continue to transform businesses across all sectors, creating enhanced experiences for consumers of sport.

The last five years has seen digital platforms creep into sport at the commercial level. They are now starting to cascade down to all of sport. This offers opportunities for sport to focus and engage with their stakeholders, members, participants and fans in a manner that draws them closer through innovative and customised experiences. In turn, this creates sustainable growth and success both on and off the field.

Any organisational transformation needs to be embraced rationally and resourced adequately within a whole of organisation strategy. Both external and internal factors and constraints must be considered.

To succeed, a digital transformation strategy will: •Align Organisational Outcomes to Digital Transformational Solutions: It is critical to ensure that the required strategic outcomes are identified (such as increase participation, drive fan engagement, unlock future revenue streams, engage and enhance sponsor outcomes) to ensure that any technology solution is appropriate, structured and aligned to reach every part of the business to achieve the desired outcomes. •Transformation grand plan: Scope where the core technical backbone of the digital solution fits into the core business of the organisation. Then identify and plan how other component solutions for service delivery business practices integrate into the structure of the technology. The organisation will avoid going down ‘digital dead ends’ by ensuring solutions sit within a broadly supported ecosystem that ensures ongoing system support and integration with future technological advances. •Engage, Support and Transform How People Work: Identify the benefits and expected outcomes for each area of the business and detail how the steps to transformation will be achieved. It will consider the initial friction of transition and how to engage, train and support people through this now and into the future. •Realign Business Processes and Systems for the Future: Explore existing processes and realign them to unlock strategic outcomes, efficiencies and value enabled by digital capabilities. Case studies can be a powerful tool to understand the breadth of what is achievable. •Embrace Digital Technology Intelligently: Understand that the generational opportunity to embrace fast-growing areas such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to deliver insights. These solutions are real, very costeffective and available (and being used) right now. Today’s technology enables operational efficiencies, freeing people to focus externally, engaging more closely with stakeholders, participants and fans. Martin Sheppard is Managing Director of the Smart Connection Consultancy and co-founder of the National Sports Convention. Business Transformation for sport integrated approach would align all technologies into a customer focused platform with examples of Apps and stand-alone systems.

The scope of the transformation should include an integrated platform that addresses all of these aspects and examples of current Apps or systems may include: 1. People and Volunteers - managing the people side of the business, both internally and for activities, programs, events and facilities being managed. • Staff management (Employment Hero, payroll linkage etc.) • Recruitment (SportsPeople, CV Check, My recruitment) • Volunteer management • Staff /event rostering (Rosterfy) • Child safety • Staff records/training compliance 2. Organisational Operations - integrated efficient processes and systems streamlining the way the organisation administers its business. • Administration (Microsoft Office and Adobe Suite, Goto meetings, cloud storage, etc.) • Comms (Skype, TEAMS, Zoom etc.) • Finance (Xero/MYOB, payroll, financial reporting, and budget management) • Quality and operational systems (TidyHQ, Sports Communities etc.) 3. Services and Product Offerings - what is provided to the organisation’s members, customers and broader community. • Event management (bookings - people, organisations and venues) • Program management (activities, registrations and bookings, event planning) • Facility / Venue bookings (scheduling, bookings, ticketing, hiring’s, parking) • Comms (Comms tools and platforms, Zoom, TEAMS, Skype) • Membership management • Retail opportunities (catering, events, On-line shop offering products, memorabilia, uniforms) • Hospitality services (events, bookings, food and beverage, coteries, corporate events) • Payment options 4. Customer and Market Focus - building the community, ensuring that they are looked after to maximise retention and create opportunities to enhance their experience and create additional revenue streams. • Membership management (members database, CRM functionality) • Marketing, comms and sales programs • Stakeholder management • Participation management and registration • Corporate and sponsors development and management maximisation • ROI reporting and management • Upselling capability • Key membership and customer portals 5. Customer Centric Data and Information Management - the backbone of the organisaiton that aggregates data from all Apps, platforms and technology solutions to provide a central pivotal data-lake to analyse and provide relevant information. • Alignment with customers, users and stakeholder’s data • Collection of data from third party sources and aligned for organisation • Allows centralisation of customer data in a manner that provides integrated management information for decision making Innovation, Leadership and Business Results - bringing together the insights needed to show true leadership based on data insights, will drive innovation and business success. It would be expected that this is shown digitally through an integrated Dashboard that provides the organisation with the strategic and operational knowledge to grow and be successful.