The final whistle has blown on your major digital transformation project and you’re celebrating a successful launch, clutching your winner’s medal and dreaming of a well earned break on the beaches of Dubai.
But the work of developing and maintaining successful and sustainable digital marketing platforms never stops. Market leading platforms can quickly become yesterday’s news. Without attention, things start to slow down or break down. Your championship winning platform is in danger of relegation.
We’re going heavy on the football metaphors because we’d like to talk about our work with The English Football League (The EFL) as an example of why continuous support matters so much.
Why ongoing marketing platform support is crucial to a winning strategy
Giant killers
Recently we delivered a major project for The EFL: stable and effective websites for 65 football clubs in nine months. It was a massive undertaking but we did it and lots of backs were patted at the end.
We promised that this platform would perform reliably for the full duration of our seven year partnership and in fact get even better as new opportunities and challenges appeared. We also committed to supporting the clubs’ marketing teams who were the main users of the service.
Close relationships have developed between the clubs and our service team. In just five weeks, 183 people attended face to face training in the new websites. We’re trusted because we understand both the tech and the needs of the clubs, and can provide answers to any challenge.
Our relationship with Kin + Carta Connect is really positive and a genuine collaboration. Getting to the launch of the websites required a huge effort but we’ve been equally impressed by the continuous support which means we can kick on from this starting point and give clubs and fans an evolving experience.
Russell Byrne Head of Digital, The EFL
Ready for action
The platform we developed is complex and includes critical services such as live streaming video and in-play match statistics.
For this reason our service provides a single place to get help 24/7/365. It’s available by phone, email and chat. We log issues and then work directly with the other service providers through to resolution.
To date we have supported nearly 5,000 live matches, from pre-season friendlies to Boxing Day derbies, and have dealt with 8,000 tickets.
Building for the future
We also provide a continuous optimisation programme to ensure that the sites are as effective as possible. We’re constantly looking for ways to improve the operational service.
The result? A team that keeps winning and a platform that will be significantly better on Day 2,555 of our partnership than it was Day 1.
A support operations service can imitate football in that it takes a tremendous amount of effort and planning to make things look effortlessly simple. So, if you’re about to enjoy your biggest victory make sure you’ve got plans in place for next season.