We hope you enjoy our blog posts - they demonstrate the way we think and work.
Data Standards – what are they and why do we need them?
Maintaining data standards is an incredibly important part of your data strategy. It involves keeping your data clean, in the correct format, and verified before you do anything with it. Imagine how important it is to have the correct email address for a fan before sending out any campaigns, or the right data points before you try and find your actionable insights. If you ever want to merge your databases together in an SCV (or any other type of data warehouse) the relevant data fields must match up. They must use the same pattern. According to a 2017 article in Harvard Business Review,...
Read More →
What is data quality and why does it cost companies money?
15 years ago, British data scientist Clive Humby coined the popular maxim data is the new oil which has since been updated by Ted McCandless to data is the new soil. We should all agree on the importance on data to support decision making as there are plenty of examples out there (Moneyball anyone?) but what about the cost of having bad data? 7 years in the CRM and analytics industry pushed me to write an article about this topic, adding some tips/recommendations to change its vision: from business cost to business opportunity. Data quality dimensions Data quality is measured...
Read More →
Types of data charts and their uses.
I can make a guess that, one day, some of you might have been faced with the question: “Which type of charts should I use for a particular piece of data?”. Nowadays, any BI tool provides you with an opportunity to choose between various charts. However, it is no surprise you always want to pick the best one which will help get the answers you need. As a data analyst, I build lots of visualizations, and have a better understanding of its usage than many people. In this blog I’d like to list my most favorite types of charts/graphs and...
Read More →
Delivering Sponsor Value
More Value for Sponsors = More Sales/Higher Fees Add real value to your sponsorship rights with a simple change to the way you include their brand in your email campaigns. Those of you who know me, will be aware I “cut my teeth” in the sports industry selling sponsorship. This went on for another 25 years. And those who have attended one of my workshops will have heard me say “if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have earned a lot more in commission.” After the laughter’s died down (yes my workshops are fun), I caveat that comment...
Read More →
Rights Owners – why you need to know more about your TV viewers
...when you have “the option” to go straight to your fans, you could change the position of the decimal point in your broadcaster contract.... One of the challenges/frustrations of writing a book is that you know the minute you hit “send” on the finished manuscript, submitting it to your publisher (in my case, the esteemed Routledge who did an incredible job for me), you know that you’re going to want to update or edit it even more then you’ve already done so. But as pointed out to me by Callum MacGregor (a loyal and valued colleague of over 5 years who is...
Read More →
“Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.”
Whether it’s Aristotle or Dale Carnegie you ascribe to this quote, the principle behind it is that sometimes we need a bit of repetition to really understand something. Mike Bohndiek, a leading technology, commercial and business change professional operating in the sports industry, recently reviewed my book, Winning with Data – CRM and Data Analytics for the Business of Sports, and used the above to refer to the way the chapters are broken up into an introduction, thoughts, examples and summaries. In his opinion, this approach helped make it “a good read on a plane” and “light work”. That’s exactly the...
Read More →
CRM and data “can and must become the central platform to any sports business”
As some of you may know, I've recently written a book - Winning with Data: CRM and Analytics for the Business of Sports - to be published by Routledge in August this year. In the course of securing endorsements from academics and industry executives, Karen Earl, chairman of the European Sponsorship Association from 2007 to 2017, and head of Synergy and Karen Earl Sponsorship, generously gave her time to read a proof edition and provide me with her thoughts: "This book is a must-read, not only for sports governing bodies and clubs, but for anyone operating in the sponsorship and sports industries. Not...
Read More →- « Previous Page
- Next Page »