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Week 5 Case1

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175 views2 pages

Week 5 Case1

Uploaded by

Bobby Aliansyah
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Data Management Helps the Charlotte Hornets

Learn More About Their Fans

T
he NBA’s Charlotte Hornets have millions of fans, but until recently they
didn’t know very much about them. The Charlotte, North Carolina–based
basketball team had many millions of records of fan data—online ticket
and team gear purchases, food and beverage purchases at games, and com-
ments about the team on social media. Every time a fan performs one of these
actions, more data about that fan are created. Three million records of food
and beverage purchase transactions are generated
during each Hornets game. There was too much
unorganized customer data for decision makers to
digest.
All of this accumulating data, which came from
many different sources, started to overtax the
team’s Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship
management system. There were 12 to 15 differ-
ent sources of data on Hornets fan behavior and
they were maintained in separate data repositories
that could not communicate with each other. It be-
came increasingly difficult for the Hornets to un-
derstand their fans and how they were interacting
with the organization.
Five years ago, Hornets management decided
to improve its approach to data management. The
© Oleksii Sidorov/Shutterstock
team needed technology that could easily main-
tain data from many different sources and 12 different vendors and it needed
to be able to combine and integrate what amounted to 12 different profiles on
each fan into a single profile. This would enable the Hornets to understand
each fan’s behavior in much greater detail and offer them a more personalized
experience.
Under the leadership of Chris Zeppenfeld, the Hornets’ senior director of
business intelligence, the team implemented a data warehouse that would con-
solidate all of the Hornets’ customer data from its various data sources in a
single location where the data could be easily accessed and analyzed by busi-
ness users. The warehouse was based on a SAP HANA database optimized to
process very large quantities of data at ultra-high speed and included Phizzle
Fan Tracker™ software to cleanse, streamline, and combine millions of fan re-
cords to create a single profile for each Hornets fan. Phizzle Fan Tracker is a
fan engagement platform designed to consolidate, analyze, and act on multiple
data sources. The platform’s data aggregation capabilities, innovative data vi-
sualization tools, and social listening solutions provide sports properties and
brands the capability to gather and analyze digital, social, and real-world fan
engagements. Fan Tracker works with the SAP HANA database to consolidate

211
212 Part Two Information Technology Infrastructure

customer profiles, analyze and act on real-time online behavior, and consoli-
date all existing data sources to uniquely identify fan records. The solution pro-
vides a unified overview and deeper understanding of each fan, allowing clubs
to offer their fans a more personalized experience.
By using Fan Tracker and a unified data warehouse, the Hornets have com-
piled and synthesized 25 million fan and consumer interactions, saving over $1.5
million in consulting expenses. They now have a real-time data profile for every
one of their 1.5 million fans, which includes up-to-the minute behavioral data
on each fan from third-party applications as well as the Hornets’ own sources.
Each profile reveals detailed insights into a fan’s behavior including sentiment,
purchase history, interactions, and fan value across multiple points of contact.
Zeppenfeld believes that better fan data management has helped the team rank
among the top five NBA franchises for new full season ticket sales each year.

Sources: Jim O’Donnell, “Charlotte Hornets Use Phizzle Built on HANA to Analyze Fan
Behavior,” SearchSAPtechtarget.com, February 11, 2018; “NBA Team Charlotte Hornets/SAP
Case Study,” www.phizzle.com, accessed February 12, 2018; and Mark J. Burns, “Why The
Charlotte Hornets Are Using Phizzle To Streamline Their Data Warehouse,” Sport Techie,
September 2016.

T he experience of the Charlotte Hornets illustrates the importance of data


management. Business performance depends on what a firm can or can-
not do with its data. The Charlotte Hornets NBA basketball team was a thriv-
ing business, but both operational efficiency and management decision making
were hampered by fragmented data stored in multiple locations that were dif-
ficult to access and analyze. How businesses store, organize, and manage their
data has an enormous impact on organizational effectiveness.
The chapter-opening diagram calls attention to important points raised by
this case and this chapter. The Charlotte Hornets had accumulated very large
quantities of fan data from many different sources. Marketing campaigns and
personalized offers to fans were not as effective as they could have been be-
cause it was so difficult to assemble and understand the data required to obtain
a detailed understanding of each customer. The solution was to combine the
Hornets’ customer data from all sources in a data warehouse that provided a
single source of data for reporting and analysis and use Fan Tracker software to
consolidate disparate pieces of customer data into a single profile for each cus-
tomer. The Hornets had to reorganize their data into a standard company-wide
format; establish rules, responsibilities, and procedures for accessing and using
the data; and provide tools for making the data accessible to users for querying
and reporting.
The data warehouse integrated company data from all of its disparate sources
into a single comprehensive database that could be queried directly. The data
were reconciled to prevent multiple profiles on the same customer. The so-
lution improved customer marketing, sales, and service while reducing costs.
The Hornets increased their ability to quickly analyze very large quantities of
data by using SAP HANA high-speed database technology.
The data warehouse boosted operational efficiency and decision making
by making more comprehensive and accurate customer data available and by

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