Digital transformation strategy for a global sporting organisation

Due to the confidential nature of strategic consulting, I can't typically publicly mention the brands I work with. Instead, I can say that I have been working with a governing sporting body for over a year, one which organises international tournaments, and facilitates their sport at all levels. I have been working with a consulting partner to build a digital unification blueprint and future channel concepts, which has led to a new site build, learning channel optimisations, a tournament-specific digital strategy and new strategic frameworks.

Challenge

The client has millions of customers, such as patrons and fans, participants at every level and age, coaches, teachers, clubs, competition officials and organisers, broadcast partners, and the event workforce who make their tournaments possible. Today, their digital experiences are fragmented, forcing customers to work too hard to do the jobs they need to do. They are also in the midst of a long-running transformation program which has largely focussed on infrastructure to date.

Objective

Success was defined as being able to create, articulate and rationalise a new channel architecture that unifies existing channels and leads to an evolving roadmap to make the new channel architecture a reality.

Approach

I designed an approach which started with myself, a UX designer and a solution architect analysing existing research to see how over 100 digital touchpoints were being used by customers. This allowed us to create an  ecosystem map to show all unification gaps, such as  disjointed booking processes and disconnected information with multiple logins. 

We also analysed multiple organisations inside of and outside of the sporting industry, how they were unifying their channels and how they were implementing emerging technology and AI. This resulted in a scorecard the organisation could mark themselves against.

After designing a number of options, they chose the new channel architecture they wanted to implement. In future, customers will access an all encompassing and personalised website where they can login with SSO to access a dashboard that gamifies all their activity and incorporates ecommerce and a new loyalty system. There will be additional authenticated web channels in future, such as a centralised LMS. Separate sites will exist for their key tournaments and a suite of mobile apps will focus on those tournaments, playing at different levels, coaching, officiating and gaming.

To help them act on this future state, a number of guidelines, prioritisation frameworks and roadmaps were created. A larger delivery team, made up of multiple designers, technologists, content practitioners and delivery experts have been working on the recommended centralised website, powered by a new CMS and facilitating multiple complex booking processes.

I worked with Product Managers to develop new channel concepts and strategies for 3 key channels working with their leaders to provide new frameworks and approaches to strategic problems. So much of my work has also been storytelling; reframing approaches and narratives to appeal to a diverse range of stakeholders who are preparing for a significant change. This has included recommendations on digital team structures and how broad topics like personalisation are applicable to what the organisation wants and needs to do to make it a reality.

Outcomes

The strategy successfully informed multiple streams of work, which are now in progress. Comprehension about digital experience has markedly matured as a result of this engagement.