The Challenge

A well-known professional sports franchise recognized it was time to deploy a CRM to manage its B2B2C relationships. Many departments touched customers, and the platform of choice needed to be flexible and adaptable to the needs of its user base. Key departments included Marketing, Corporate and Premium Sales, Corporate and Premium Service, Interns, Community Relations, Ticketing, Merchandise, Cheerleaders, Mascot, Social, Digital, Guest Services, and Stadium Operations.

While a robust ticketing solution was in place, many other areas of the business were still run previously off Excel spreadsheets. The organization found the lack of a relational database to be time-consuming and prevented timely analysis of key data.

The Results

V2 began the program by leveraging its D(3P) Management Consulting framework to assess the state of data, people, processes, and platforms. V2 developed a technical blueprint for Salesforce with a special focus on the complex modeling of the sports B2B2C data model. V2 combined Salesforce’s B2B Account model with Person Accounts functionality, taking into consideration scalability, data storage, UX, and integrations with third-party solutions.

The solution leveraged standard objects, custom objects, and even some code-based extensions for complex feature sets not native to the Salesforce platform at the time. Key features included a 360-degree view of season ticket holders, advanced revenue modeling for sponsorship sales, post-sales activation workflows, stadium operations incident tracking, and premium sales and service management.

Data architecture and integration were critical for the success of this program. Accounts had myriad definitions spanning B2B2C and summary-level ticketing data needed to flow back into CRM for viewing by staff who aimed to provide top-notch customer service. V2 designed, tested, and deployed an integration between a leading ticketing solution and Salesforce. A significant effort around data cleansing, deduplication, and data migration for the program was performed. V2 increased the development of integrations to strengthen marketing automation and mappings, which created greater efficiency for the daily download of eCommerce transactions. Finally, V2 designed custom reports and dashboards for each department spanning executive-level, manager-level, and individual contributor use cases.

The training was extensive and tailored to each department individually. V2 combined small group training, with follow-up 1:1 sessions, quick reference guides, and other methods to drive high user adoption and efficiency.