1. FC Kaiserslautern is aiming for comprehensive digitalization measures that affect the strategic and operational business of the soccer club. Above all, FCK wants to modernize its systems and business processes holistically and take them to the next level of digitalization. The club from the Western Palatinate is relying on Fraunhofer IESE as its digitalization partner.
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What is it about?
The match plan - opportunities of digitalization in professional sports
The challenge:
The set-up - the digital basis must be right
The support:
Coach on the sidelines - IESE as a digitalization partner for FCK
The result:
The victory - 1:0 for the digital future
Your advantages:
Fraunhofer IESE as your partner for digital transformation
Digitalization has been an increasingly important tool in professional sport for years. In most cases, historically grown system and software island solutions dominate - as is also the case in professional soccer clubs. With the help of Fraunhofer IESE, 1. FC Kaiserslautern wants to carry out ongoing system modernization in order to network its systems and digitalize its business processes to a greater extent. This should make the club even more efficient and optimally positioned for the future. To realize this vision, the first step is to develop a holistic digitalization strategy.
The digitalization strategy is a strategic tool for not losing sight of the overarching goal and deriving initial measures for implementing digitalization in day-to-day business. To this end, FCK and Fraunhofer IESE first entered the "digital playing field" with a kick-off workshop to determine the status quo.
1. FC Kaiserslautern has to assert itself in an extremely dynamic and competitive environment. The dependency on (match) results is high. Due to these conditions, club decision-makers are often heavily involved in day-to-day operations and have limited resources for strategic work. "Technical debt" (technical debt) or legacy systems result in high costs, parallel operation of systems and time-consuming business processes.
The challenge lies in the fundamental identification of problem areas and fields of action in the form of a status quo analysis. However, this often leads to new questions that companies need to address: What goals do I want to achieve with digitalization? What technical and organizational measures need to be taken? How expensive are these measures? What priority and dependencies on day-to-day business should the measures have?
Fraunhofer IESE has end-to-end expertise in software and systems engineering. This means that IESE's customers are supported from the idea generation and conception phase through to the implementation and evaluation of a digital solution.
The digitalization project with 1. FC Kaiserslautern is currently in the brainstorming phase. In preliminary discussions, the experts from IESE asked about the needs of the soccer club. In order to involve all of FCK's decision-makers, an in-depth kick-off workshop was then held - which covered all of the club's individual key topics. Thanks to the intensive collaboration in the workshop, IT and the sports business have grown closer together.
While the kick-off workshop is just one of many measures towards digitalization and interoperability at the club, the FCK has already received a results report including recommendations for action from Fraunhofer IESE. The most important findings of the workshop were documented in this report.
The report also contains a concrete action plan for the further strategic planning of FC Kaiserslautern's digital transformation and highlights the potential for sustainable collaboration with Fraunhofer IESE.
This is what Marcus Böse (Director CRM & Digital at 1 FC Kaiserslautern) says
Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE