CASE STUDY
Can you tell us about the pioneering programme of digital engagement and transformation that you were responsible for championing ?
When I joined three years ago , we were building some great front-end solutions . Our flagship app , Matchday , was launched with a lot of fanfare . It looks amazing and works really well . that those flagship digital products can bring , while spending time and money on fixing the back-end as well . That has been a process and we ’ re not there yet . One thing I was grateful for when Contino approached me about featuring as a top Digital Transformation innovator in its report was that I was quite open about the fact we ’ re not finished and that this is not yet a perfect Digital Transformation . However , I ’ m grateful that Contino was still willing to talk , understand and feature us .
However , I also noticed that there was nothing going on to fix the back-end problems – the invisible problems that we had . We were very much running as two separate organisations , with this digital function on one side and the legacy technology function on the other . All the money was going into digital and not a lot of it was going into transforming the back-end , which was creating more problems for us . For example , up until very recently we had up to 12 different ways for you either as a fan , a participant or a player of football in England to register with The FA . However , we had no way of knowing whether somebody that had registered as a coach was the same person that had a ticket to go and watch the Women ’ s World Cup , for example . We had no way of marrying that information , which was a problem with our systems .
How is technology a key enabler for the fans ?
Though football is ultimately an offline activity , for the fans , technology is about making sure they can get to the game as quickly and easily as possible while maximising their enjoyment .
It ’ s simple things like making sure that we can deliver a ticket in multiple different ways in order to process people as quickly as possible when they ’ re entering the ground . It could also mean providing up-to-date information on queues at the bars or queues at the toilets , for instance . There are millions of people whose lives we ’ re aiming to improve through technology and we do that by simplification .
I began to consider the back-end more closely by questioning why we weren ’ t transforming this at the same time as we were launching digital products with great potential at the front . My approach was about being a bit more holistic and understanding the value
What innovative capabilities does The FA now have ?
As a not-for-profit governing body , we ’ re making good progress because of the cloud . We focus on making
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