Soccerex Recap: Budget Conscious Digital Transformation & Operational Excellence

At Soccerex Americas, Teamworks’ Co-Founder and President of Global Markets, Mitch Heath sat down with industry leaders to discuss digital transformation and operational excellence. U.S. Soccer’s Paul Anderson and Arsenal’s Katia Zavershinskaya discuss technology vision and long-term success.

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Taking a holistic approach to technology vision‍

with Paul Anderson, Senior Solution Architect at U.S. Soccer

Paul addresses a major topic in today’s tech space noting that operations and organizations have many technological needs across a vast number of areas.

So, what is tech vision? When we say tech vision, we're thinking about how do we meet the needs of all of your staff across all of the different areas you work in. What are all of the systems that you're going to use? At the end of the day, you're going to have to justify to someone why do we have 12 different systems or 15 different systems. Could we have fewer or do we have gaps? Are there things that we need that we don't have today? And you will need to be able to justify that.

What do we mean when we say we need a holistic approach? We mean an approach that is not just designed for IT or your professional system engineers. This is the way of approaching your decision about the technology where we're really thinking from a bigger perspective. Approaching it from the functional perspective, and making it aforethought in the decision-making process.

Start simple with two key buckets: Users and Data

Users

• Technology has to be usable by people, both internal and external. Internally with staff and externally with anyone outside of the organization that needs to interact with your system.

• Think about how different user groups interact to eliminate redundancy and save resources. Can we solve the same need with one system versus two?

Data

• There will be needs for systems and solutions to collect and analyze performance data. Player data may be necessary for scouting but never needed by a commercial department.

• Recognize there may be systems and solutions that have no overlap and certain business lines may have completely unique needs. Where do we have specific needs that require its own solution?

• Better data leads to better insights which leads to better decisions.

• Data itself isn't intelligent, people have to use data to make strategic decisions. 

‍User Journeys

Users just like data can move across systems or departments. How do we keep track of that data tied to the user?

Takeaways:

• No one platform will do everything for you.

• It is most successful to focus on your user groups and how you can best support users across those groups in relation to one another. How can we centralize and consolidate?

• Being budget-conscious about digital transformation isn’t just about spending less money.

• Underinvesting will lead to cutting solutions that were needed to do important work or you will be using sub-standard solutions. Ask how do we do more with less?

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Choosing the right technology and ensuring the long-term success

with Katia Zavershinskaya, IT Business Solutions Manager at Arsenal

There are three key phases that an organization must think through when choosing technology geared toward long-term success. Katia outlines the phases and items to think about for each phase of the process.

 Initial Assessment

1. Identify operational challenges. What operational challenges are we solving?
2. Identify the need for technology. What is on the market vs. what exists within the club?
3. Identify the benefit of bringing that technology to the organization. What is the cost-benefit analysis of new tech vs. existing tech?

Scoping Phase

Identifying the right technology partner and through key points of analysis

1. Internal requirements/constraints
2. Market assessment
3. IT security
4. Sustainability & longevity

Implementation/User Adoption Phase

1. Engagement
2. Buy-In
3. Accountability
4. Collaboration

Bring in key stakeholders as early as possible to increase their accountability for understanding how it works, ensure it is supported by your technology team, and continually work alongside the technology provider to have long-term success.

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ABOUT TEAMWORKS

Teamworks is the operating system for elite athletics, empowering more than 5,000 clients around the world to better connect and collaborate by simplifying their internal processes. Based in Durham, North Carolina, and founded in 2004, Teamworks continues to invest heavily in technology and expand the team to respond to the increasing customer demand. Organizations that depend on Teamworks to create a culture of communication and accountability include collegiate athletic departments across Division I, II, and III, professional teams in the EPL, Premiership Rugby, NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS and more. Visit www.teamworks.com for more information.