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Experts’ Views
How To Gain Control Of
SP RTS
DATA
N
owadays you cannot read a magazine, or it
contains an article stipulating the importance of
(big) data. However, what does this mean in
concrete terms for a sports organisation to accommodate
this evolution? insight to control present and future issues, also removing
the stigma of merely being a hub between the insurance
corporations and members of the sport.
Challenges in sports Traditional sports participation is changing, and sports
organisations are faced with the challenge to keep the sport
attractive but also manageable as people shy away from
committing themselves to traditional leagues/tournaments
mostly due to changing lifestyles and increasing scarcity of
time of players and volunteers. Sports organisations need to
adapt to the fast-changing digital environment while
meeting the social demands of players. Significant
challenges are: How do I keep, increase, engage and
facilitate my members? Each sports organisations’ aim should be to streamline
processes and improve management tasks by Data. Quick,
accurate and continuous insight into data from and within
day-to-day-processes, will significantly enhance
management tasks in all layers within a sports organisation.
Data enables engagement with all the people that have an
interest or connection to the sport, being a player, coach,
fan or parent. So, it is without a doubt crucial that sports
organisations have ownership of accurate and updated data
to carry out useful insights that ideally drive a sport to
grow, broaden it’s fanbase and allowing to be self-
sustainable from a commerce point of view.
Even more important is that government bodies from many
grassroots sports do not control their “own” data. Local
representatives of the sport and their clubs increasingly
manage their own game by the use of external software
vendors that are not in “control” by the original owner of
the competition. The consequence is that these owners are
losing their added value because they don’t produce any
insights nor can manage and uphold their position as the
governing body. It is precisely by managing, evaluating,
distributing and commercialising relevant data that gains Gaining control of data is necessary. The difficulty that
arises from this insight is that large organisations invest
millions in custom-made software where most sports
organisations do not have the financial resources to build an
entirely new platform or “eco-system” of digital channels
such as websites, apps, narrowcasting and tv. Hence, the
reason that most persist in embracing sports software
vendors that control their data, while they alone benefit
from it by continually being a transaction between VC’s and
payment facilitators.
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Custom-made or ready-made solutions