St Kilda Football Club Kicks Goals with 5G Networks and Managed It

ST KILDA FOOTBALL CLUB KICKS GOALS WITH 5G NETWORKS AND MANAGED IT

The Situation The Solution The Result

Moving to new premises 5G Networks’ Managed IT The abilitity to scale easily meant St Kilda FC had Services provided robust with seasonally changing to manage significant and agile technology needs means St Kilda FC transformation and solutions that could grow now offers an exceptional new technology with the club over time. user experience to current implementations. and future members. Personalised fan experiences, operational agility and real-time decision making are just some of the game changers this unified team is building.

The Situation

A relocation back to RSEA Park at Moorabbin has seen St. Kilda Football Club manage significant transformation over the last 12 months. A raft of new technology implementations, guided by the Managed IT expertise at 5G Networks, is driving a better fan experience and better decision-making in all parts of this famous club - including the football arena. Greater efficiencies are being realised across the back- office operations of the club too. Mat Wraith, IT Manager at St. Kilda Football Club, explained that the move back to Moorabbin was a catalyst for transforming. Aging technology and infrastructure would no longer meet the demands of the club and “our supporters were asking to be more involved”. This was particularly when it came to boosting the club engagement experience and ensuring more efficient running of the club’s operations. “For example, the old telephony system used by the membership department had severe limitations and was, in short, a pretty basic call centre system. Membership is extremely important revenue for all AFL clubs so, as we move towards the season ahead and our first push for sign-ups, the new collaboration platform will be vital to creating a brilliant fan experience.”

The Solution

Collaboration to help build better fan experiences The 5G Networks team were instrumental in helping the club migrate to cloud-based business applications as part of its preparation to move to a next generation collaboration platform. Not only does the new system provide innovative new communication features, it brings greater stability and agility through the capability to configure features via self-service functionality. “We can literally change things at a moment’s notice to deliver elastic type scale such as when we experience seasonally high call volumes. This agility is particularly important for when we activate membership campaigns or re-direct calls as part of club meetings, which members can attend via conference calls,” says Mat. As the club gets ready to move towards this flexible, feature rich platform, remote working and collaboration are at the core. With a fluid workforce containing over 120 permanent staff, this number often flexes to 400 with the raft of volunteers the club manages. “Our workforce is incredibly dynamic with a growing need to support those who work remotely. Therefore, our communication and collaboration platforms must deliver the business agility and flexibility to support this work practice, which means it is also an essential part of creating a great fan experience.”

We Listen | We Innovate | We Deliver The Result

The new collaboration capability provides St. Kilda with a number of reporting functions; enabling the membership team to further improve the service provided. For example, they now analyse the number of calls made (both inbound and outbound), monitor call response times, call queue effectiveness and voice quality statistics. All these statistics help improve member experiences, drive decisions around call staff numbers, as well as outbound marketing campaigns. Mat adds, “With a membership of around 40,000, and the first push beginning last year, our ability to provide a great experience to our fans is extremely important. As part of developing this plan, we’ll shortly be able to integrate our new collaboration platform with other IT systems. This allows us to mine the membership databases so that when fans call into the club, we’ll instantly recognise the number and the supporter to offer a very personalised service. As a result, the fan experience is improved dramatically and it’s far more efficient too.”

5G Networks helping Saints IT grow as valued member of the team Perhaps the biggest win off the ground for St. Kilda has been migration to MS Office365. Because 5G Networks offers these services from the cloud, the club utilises the improved flexibility to leverage automated workflows and create greater efficiencies around core IT operations. Mat explains further, “Automation and the streamlining of workflows has made a big difference to our IT team. Instead of dealing with the day-to-day operational components that previously took most of our time, 5G Networks have unlocked our capability to focus on adding real strategic value to the business.”

And that includes things like making use of all the different types of data sets the club has collected over the years but has not yet had the chance to value-add; until now that is. As a result, IT now offers analytical insights from the data, such as attaining reports from the ticketing system which, after cleansing, integrate into AFL systems to send out real-time alerts and offers to fans.

A hardware transformation for real time decision-making Additionally, the transformation has seen the introduction of new hardware infrastructure to assist areas such as video review by coaches on the training field. New data storage capabilities mean video from cameras and drones on the training pitch can be uploaded, stored and viewed straight onto coaches’ tablets in the paddock, helping them make real-time performance decisions. There’s also been a complete refresh of the networks, with the entire club campus enjoying wireless networking. There are now over 50 guest Wi-Fi and public Wi-Fi access points, compared to just six at the previous site. Members can now make full use of the wireless access to stay connected at the club. And this connected environment will further extend out to the training stadium. Also used by the St Kilda AFL women’s team, along with three other organisations: AFL Victoria, and Sandringham Dragons. The final word from Mat: “It’s been a big year of change for St. Kilda as we look to put the club at the forefront of sports tech. Our fans demand more of us and want to better integrate their lives with the activities at the club. Technology is a great enabler of that. And, with the technology being used out on the training field, coaches are better able to make the right decisions, faster. With more to come, 5G Networks are a crucial partner in helping us to leverage these market leading sport tech’ services to reach our goals.”

We Listen | We Innovate | We Deliver