Digital engagement company PTI has renewed its association with Championship football club Norwich City, with the new deal set to allow the team to take control of its own streaming product.
The extended deal will also include a new mobile app, website and data solution that will provide an integrated single-customer view, as well as a new ticketing platform and enhanced business intelligence capabilities for internal stakeholders.
PTI began working with Norwich in early 2019 and the two parties have renewed their association despite the club’s relegation from the Premier League last season. PTI has helped Norwich enhance its digital offering since partnering with the club.
Ben Kensell, Norwich’s chief operating officer, said: “As a club, we recognised that we’d slipped behind. Our processes were outdated, our platforms legacy and our thinking siloed. We aren’t the first club, nor will we be the last, to fall into that trap.
“Technology is moving so fast that you take your eye off the ball for a moment and you are behind the curve. The world has become increasingly digital and at a pace, and our ambition is to go from behind the curve to best in class by virtue of the transformation project that we are currently embarking on.”
Kensell added: “What makes this project unique in our view is that we’ll have wiped the slate clean. The principle we had from the outset was that we could have no one area letting down the vision, which is typical of these projects.
“You might have multiple vendor contracts which are out of sync for example, meaning you can only do 70 per cent of the job and our mindset is that your fan experience is only as strong as your weakest link. This makes it a significant undertaking but ultimately drives the best practice outcomes and will place us at the forefront of digital capabilities which is a long way from where we are currently.”
Norwich initially appointed PTI Digital to help the club roadmap its journey for digital enhancement and Kensell said the company was the standout candidate.
“To build a ‘future-ready’ infrastructure you need to have the right team” he said. “Part of the reason we had fallen behind was firstly investment, but equally skill set and experience in the digital space who could understand the end-to-end journey.
“Having looked to the market, PTI Digital were a clear standout in this space because they could do just that – help us to understand the technology requirements such as connectivity, and the plumbing to get the foundations right, before building out a data and digital strategy tailored to our ambitions and on to assisting in delivering the commercial strategy to justify the investment.”
PTI said the investment is worth “well over seven figures collectively”. Norwich’s management team has approved a PTI-designed future-state architecture and a four-month RFP process to appoint the vendors and bring the journey to life for the 2021-22 season is nearing its conclusion.
Kensell added: “It is as much a mindset change, a cultural change, as it is a platform and digital-led change. Yes, we will be redeveloping platforms from the ground up, but of equal if not greater importance is the level of collaboration and buy-in across the business.
“We live in a digital-ready world, where fans are using second screens over 60 per cent of the time, either at the ground or at home whilst consuming sport. My challenge to our staff is to adapt to this and address that audience.
“It could be as simple as providing real-time transport information to help fans get home or as complex as personalised marketing based on 15 data points to provide a truly individual experience or anything in between. We are wanting to be ahead of the curve in this space and we now have everything in place to be able to deliver it.”
Image: PTI
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