Interview with Nico Hruby, Chief Digital Officer at SV Werder Bremen
In this new article of our series “Digital Transformation in Football Clubs”, we have interviewed Nico Hruby, Chief Digital Officer at SV Werder Bremen - a historical Bundeslida’s club founded in 1899. Nico has been involved with the club for over two years as a Chief Digital Officer, he is leading the digital strategy of the club through all verticals. He was therefore the right person to ask him how the club's digital transformation is being handled.
SV Werder Bremen Transformation process
Nowadays, almost every organisation is looking to digitally transform its activities. As CDO, what does D.T mean to you?
Digital Transformation for us means to question existing processes and structures, seeking to permanently optimize existing ways of doing things and adapt to changing environments by effectively using digital tools and technology to enable or facilitate such change. This includes all fields of our business.
Digital transformation has become a key process to improve club performance on and outside the pitch. How did your transformation journey start at SV Werder Bremen?
It basically started by “digitizing” our company strategy. We added a layer of digitalization to the existing company strategy and defined our “digital strategy” as a master plan, defining guidelines for digitalization of our processes as well as clear goals our activities have to meet. All our digital projects have been evaluated and prioritized based on the goals of our strategy, which is reconsidered with every digital project idea we consider meaningful.
Can you tell us more about how it happened? What kind of processes did you set up? What was your first priority?
First priority was to add the digital layer to our strategy by defining clear goals and guidelines. This digital strategy was presented to all employees with a clear communication: how digital activities shall be evaluated and how digital projects will be prioritized throughout the company.
The most important factor was that the responsibility to optimize and digitize processes stayed within the departments - the digital department acts as an internal consultant, mentor and project facilitator within the company, adding digital know-how, experience and cross-functional strategic thinking to the process.
Did you have to face some cultural changes internally ? If not, did you face some complexifications? If yes, how did you manage to simplify these?
Yes, digitization means change in processes and “new stuff” - both of which lead to a huge set of different human reaction ranging from curiosity and huge intrinsic motivation down to anxiety and fears - all of which we faced as well during the process.
A lot of communication, discussion, humanity and empathy is needed to get everyone on the same side. At the end of the day digitization is meant to facilitate processes and enable new ways which haven’t been possible in the past - all of which comes along with much more opportunity for the company as a whole and for each individual than factors to be afraid of.
As the Chief Digital Officer, I consider one of the main challenges of my work to enable and strengthen digital mindset in the company which means a lot of listening, talking, discussing, finding solutions and bringing people together.
SV Werder Bremen Transformation strategy
Digital solutions are flourishing and they can fill a ton of different needs. How are you prioritizing? As of today, in which area did you make significant changes?
It’s a huge challenge to stay on top of things and separate between the real game changers and some nice little ideas coming our way. We have a backlog of more than 100 digital projects and activities for the different departments of our club.
We use a scorecard model to evaluate the impact of potential digital activities which we use as a tool to help us take the right decisions. The parameters of the scorecard are based on our strategic goals. There’s a lot of homework to be done, for example with regards to connectivity in our stadium, which is a huge enabler for added value services to be offered to our fans on matchdays. The biggest change for many of our departments is understanding the value of data - both fan data and athlete data - and optimizing the way we use it in order to take decisions and/or to provide experiences.
To date, what is/are the biggest challenge(s) you face when it comes to your innovation strategy and its implementation?
Innovation strategy for us means to be on the drivers seat instead of jumping on the next train passing by. The biggest challenge is to focus in a very dynamic and fast-turning environment with tons of new providers rising and technology being developed all around us. Focus also means to find the right balance between daily business operations and the more strategic project business. We try to overcome this by maintaining a strong and reliable network of experts in digital and business as well by giving us time and opportunity to fail and learn from our failures.
We still are the most successful German E-Soccer team in FIFA and have successfully started WerderLab, an accelerator programme aiming to identify new potential partners to work with us and develop business models based on challenges we try to solve with digital solutions.
Football is much more complex than it used to be. Training, scouting, and injury prevention have evolved significantly thanks to new technologies and the use of data. What is your take on it? What are you doing at Werder regarding this?
In our opinion it’s mission critical to use the best available information when taking decisions. Finding the right balance between performance maximization and injury risk, identifying under-rated players with the best fit for our team and a high probability to increase in market value, etc. are decisions we permanently need to take and it’s our ambition to get better and better - learning from mistakes which unavoidingly happen but need to be minimized. Data Analytics together with the right level of expertise in interpreting data as well as predicting future outcome scenarios are huge facilitators for decision making which of course we at Werder are using as well - and permanently trying to evolve as we consider these topics as biggest potential to gain competitive edge in highly competitive markets.
Fans are also important: we have read a great application you conducted after COVID's period, using an automated service to guide your ticket-holding fans through the process of deciding what they want to do with their tickets. Can you tell us a bit more about it? What did you do to enhance the value of ticket-holders through the use of digital solutions?
Our motivation is to enhance the experience of our fans when getting in contact with Werder Bremen - no matter what channel they use, if it’s digital or on-site, no matter if they want to complain about a poor experience or if they want to purchase a ticket or merchandise item. We wanted to put our fans in the position to decide on their own, whenever they want, without queuing in front of a service center or in a call center hotline, how they wanted to get their money refunded, as easy and as secure as possible. The whole process didn’t take more than 30 seconds and more than 95% of all the fans using the process rated the process with “very good” or “good”. Through digital solutions, especially using the opportunity of mobile ticketing processes we will be able to accelerate ticket sales and ticket transfer processes in the future as well as supporting our sustainability activities.
Do you have any road map or future plans to continue improving your organisation from a digital standpoint? As many new technologies are emerging (AI, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Autonomous Database…), which one would you like to investigate? To address what issue?
Yes, our road map is packed with digital activities to support our company strategy and reaching our strategic goals. New technologies are permanently investigated - but always with a clear focus on what problem they might be able to solve and/or what new possibility the might offer in terms of fan service, fan experience, decision making or business models. Artificial intelligence is part of our daily business already with a huge potential still to be realized in terms of pattern recognition and predictions scenarios for future outcomes with regards to data intelligence for both - fan and athlete data. Blockchain brings some very interesting technological opportunities which have just started to enter our industry with a huge potential to change how we used to close contracts, sell licenses, IP ownerships, tickets, etc. in the past. Connectivity will always be one of the most important facilitators, so it’s going to be exciting to see real value-added 5G services rising and especially getting prepared for 6G in the future.
What pieces of advice would you like to give for football clubs or any digital manager who wants to start their digital transformation journey?
Don’t try to jump on every train. Focus. Have a clear idea of the value you want to add to the company and each individual by performing digital activities.
Question processes before you come up with a digital solution - in many cases the issue is the process itself, not the missing technological piece. Listen to the people.
Try things and fail - it’s ok to fail, but avoid doing the same mistake twice.