For more insights into SAP Data­s­phere and its myr­i­ad appli­ca­tions with­in the enter­prise, attend ASUG Best Prac­tices (Oct. 14 — 16; reg­is­ter here) and gain cut­ting-edge insights from SAP users.

As the par­ent com­pa­ny of the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, Sharks Sports and Enter­tain­ment (SSE) relies on SAP tech­nol­o­gy to score big for its busi­ness and lev­el up the fan experience. 

The orga­ni­za­tion — which owns two pro­fes­sion­al hock­ey teams, oper­ates two mul­ti-pur­pose are­nas, and main­tains three pub­lic ice are­nas in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia — strives across all these busi­ness areas to build mem­o­rable, last­ing expe­ri­ences for cus­tomers. How­ev­er, mod­ern expec­ta­tions for events, from hock­ey games to con­certs, have dra­mat­i­cal­ly shift­ed in the last decade, fueled by the rise of online and at-home enter­tain­ment options.

“My direct com­pe­ti­tion isn’t oth­er live expe­ri­ences; it’s fig­ur­ing out how to get peo­ple off their couch and then back home safe­ly,” SSE Pres­i­dent Jonathan Bech­er said dur­ing a vir­tu­al ses­sion for media and ana­lysts host­ed by SAP. ​“Tech­nol­o­gy has a huge role in mak­ing those expe­ri­ences happen.” 

Bech­er dis­cussed how SSE more effec­tive­ly lever­ages cus­tomer data through its use of SAP solu­tions — includ­ing SAP Data­s­phere, SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP), and the SAP CX AI Toolk­it — to turn cus­tomers into loy­al, engaged fans and dri­ve sub­stan­tial growth in their Sharks365 sea­son tick­et mem­ber­ship program. 

SAP co-founder Has­so Plat­tner is the sole own­er of SSE, and the Sharks’ home are­na has been the SAP Cen­ter since 2013; as such, SSE’s wide­spread invest­ment in SAP tech­nolo­gies comes as no sur­prise. But the degree to which SAP cloud solu­tions have trans­formed cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and strength­ened a cen­tral­ized data strat­e­gy at the orga­ni­za­tion has become more pro­nounced in recent years, since SAP BTP was deployed as a ​“flex­i­ble foun­da­tion” for the organization’s tech­nol­o­gy landscape.

New Expec­ta­tions and Approaches

Bech­er detailed how SSE lever­aged SAP solu­tions to improve its use of cus­tomer data, dri­ving dra­mat­i­cal­ly ele­vat­ed fan engage­ment rates.

With cus­tomer expec­ta­tions shift­ing, SSE has rede­fined what con­sti­tutes the begin­ning and end points of its events, espe­cial­ly as the orga­ni­za­tion strives to cre­ate mem­o­rable fan expe­ri­ences. ​“You have to expand your def­i­n­i­tion of when the expe­ri­ence starts and when the expe­ri­ence ends,” Bech­er said.

As per­son­al­iza­tion becomes more of a pri­or­i­ty for the orga­ni­za­tion. SEE is also explor­ing how it can most effec­tive­ly use AI solu­tions to enhance the cus­tomer experience. 

“The eas­i­est way to per­son­al­ize is online and in the dig­i­tal world right now,” Bech­er said. ​“Most live expe­ri­ences treat all guests the same, maybe with mod­est changes for VIP mem­bers over time. We can adjust near­ly every ele­ment of the phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence, not just the dig­i­tal one, based on indi­vid­ual pref­er­ences. AI is the key to that vision.”

Above all, shift­ing expec­ta­tions has changed the way SSE col­lects and lever­ages cus­tomer data. Gone are the days of col­lect­ing as much cus­tomer data as pos­si­ble and stor­ing it in mas­sive data lakes. Enter­pris­es must estab­lish more tar­get­ed approach­es for their data strate­gies, Bech­er said, encour­ag­ing atten­dees to instead set strate­gic objec­tives and col­lect rel­e­vant data to sup­port of them.

Data Cen­tral­iza­tion

Bech­er detailed how SSE man­ages this vital cus­tomer data, espe­cial­ly giv­en the height­ened con­sumer pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions all Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­nies must adhere to. Specif­i­cal­ly, SSE lever­ages SAP Data­s­phere to bring coher­ence to its data, Bech­er said; this allows SSE to focus on col­lect­ing data rel­e­vant to its renew­al objectives.

“Some­times, it’s hard to con­trol your data,” Bech­er said, not­ing that SSE’s expan­sive set of oper­a­tions — live events, retail, and din­ing to name a few — fur­ther com­pli­cates enter­prise-wide data man­age­ment. SSE’s retail oper­a­tions are par­tial­ly out­sourced, with the organization’s part­ners often using dif­fer­ent tech­nol­o­gy, oper­at­ing mod­els, and data sources. 

In fact, Bech­er said, 15 to 20 data sources feed into SSE’s col­lec­tion efforts each week, requir­ing SAP Data­s­phere to enable data col­lec­tion, cen­tral­iza­tion, and vis­i­bil­i­ty across busi­ness units. In build­ing upon that data foun­da­tion, the orga­ni­za­tion deploys SAP CX solu­tions, includ­ing SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud. 

SSE hous­es its fan and guest infor­ma­tion via SAP Cus­tomer Data Plat­form, while SAP Cus­tomer Data Cloud helps the orga­ni­za­tion man­age var­i­ous pref­er­ences, includ­ing pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty lay­ers, and SAP Emarsys Cus­tomer Engage­ment han­dles guest mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. A data-cen­tric approach is piv­otal to SSE’s strat­e­gy for engag­ing younger gen­er­a­tions, espe­cial­ly through­out a sea­son in which the Sharks ros­ter is younger than average. 

Cur­rent­ly, SSE is in the ear­ly stages of explor­ing how its efforts to increase youth recre­ation­al skat­ing through its pro­grams will impact the Sharks’ hock­ey fan­dom. Accord­ing to Bech­er, by syn­chro­niz­ing seem­ing­ly dis­parate data sources, SSE has already seen signs that its efforts in youth skat­ing devel­op­ment are pay­ing off. ​“We’re see­ing some ear­ly indi­ca­tions that, for every kid under 12 who learns to ice skate, we cre­ate 2.3 new hock­ey fans,” he explained. 

Data-Dri­ven Results

Dur­ing the webi­nar, Bech­er proud­ly shared SSE’s improved cus­tomer engage­ment results since it began lever­ag­ing SAP solu­tions to engage fans. 

Com­par­ing this busi­ness to a soft­ware-as-a-ser­vice (SaaS) busi­ness, in which renewals and upsells are crit­i­cal to over­all suc­cess, Bech­er stat­ed that SSE has seen dra­mat­ic improve­ments in both areas since imple­ment­ing SAP solu­tions and redefin­ing its data approach. 

“Last sea­son, we got our renewals plus upsells just shy of 90%, which was above our tar­get of 85% and more than 10 per­cent­age points high­er than the pre­vi­ous sea­son,” Bech­er explained, cit­ing the organization’s use of SAP solu­tions as a game-chang­er for mem­ber­ship renewal. 

“We were able to much more eas­i­ly build a more engag­ing, rel­e­vant cam­paign for indi­vid­ual peo­ple about renewals,” he added. ​“90% is a phe­nom­e­nal renew­al rate in this industry.”