The Collingwood Football Club (CFC) is Australia’s largest sporting organisation with a vision for the future that ensures the infrastructure is solid and able to support the main focus of winning AFL premierships.
To ensure that this could be managed with full visibility from management is every area of the business, a comprehensive and scaleable system was required. Enter EngageRM.
Peter Tyler, Senior IT Manager, Collingwood Football Club
The Situation
The SituationWith over 60,000 members, over one million fans and regularly playing in front of 90,000+ spectators, Collingwood knew that there was significant opportunity in having a better system to capture, understand and engage with their community. This included the following areas of operation:
Stakeholder Management – CFC has a large group of stakeholders including supporters, members, corporate clients, sponsors and partners. This meant the solution had to manage the complex environment and tailor communications to each person.
Activity Management – with separate systems managing stakeholder groups there had not been a single view of a client record.
Membership Management – integration with Archtics was needed to ensure members were allocated the correct information and levels of access to their entitlements.
Event Management – from registration to the allocation of function seating a single solution was needed to remove the duplication of information.
Customer Service – the management of issues with a comprehensive customer service area was a key issue identified by the club.
Assets/Entitlements – the ability to manage a sales process from inception to allocation of entitlements is fundamental to the business requirements.
Marketing & Communications – targeted delivery of information is integral to the business along with analysis of this communication.
Corporate Hospitality and Sponsorship – these are two of the major revenue streams for all sports organisations, a streamlined process to first add a sale and then ensure the entitlements are allocated is required.
Integration to finance and retail sales – a system was needed to remove the double entry of information from separate parts of the business and enhance the single view of a client.
The Solution
The SolutionA core component of this vision was the selection process for the implementation of a new CRM, Finance and Merchandise software solution. Following an exhaustive process, it was decided that the Microsoft Dynamics platform would be the most suitable and extendable solution, implemented by EngageRM.
EngageRM’s worked with the individual business units, first demonstrating the system and then configuring areas where a gap was identified. This helped the business move from spreadsheets and disparate systems to a single platform.
Collingwood had a large group of stakeholders including supporters, members, corporate clients, sponsors and partners. This meant the solution had to manage complexity, communicate effectively and deliver insights. EngageRM manages these complex connections and also maintains a single view of these stakeholders, despite information coming from many sources including Ticketmaster and Ticketek, the AFL ticketing systems.
Corporate Hospitality and Sponsorship are two of the major revenue streams for all sports organisations. Therefore a streamlined process to add a sale and then ensure the entitlements are allocated is very important. EngageRM streamlined this process and extended it to the allocation of people to events. This provided the events staff with the ability to manage the seating allocation, special requirements and preferred tables for individual functions.
Integration with the SecurePay payment gateway captures the payment through these processes and then integration to Dynamics AX closes the loop for financial management. The integration then extends to Dynamics AX for Retail to manage the merchandise area of the club, including the ability to have mobile stores on match day or family days, maintaining the single view of the club’s stakeholders. This removes duplication with multiple systems not talking to each other.
Integration to other external systems can now be managed from this single view of stakeholders. For example moving data seamlessly between the merchandise web site and other web portals.
The Benefits
The BenefitsWhile the functionality of any business solution is critical, so too is the ease of use. The EngageRM platform works from the user’s familiar MS Outlook environment and therefore offers an engaging and familiar solution.
Managing daily activity using Microsoft for communications and analysis provides a faster learning curve and a stronger take-up of the solution. Other Microsoft solutions are fully integrated, including Teams and SharePoint, providing enhanced document management from the individual EngageRM records.
Collingwood is now making use of the historical data by quickly identifying segments of the database that can be more fully engaged. This includes such insights as corporate package purchase and ticket sales.
Collingwood is now at the forefront of sport both on and now off the field.
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