Introduction
Challenger Sports was looking for a Registrations and eCommerce solution that would enable them to measure and monitor their business processes more effectively due to inaccuracies made by using spreadsheets for record-keeping and other systems for order administration. The team was missing granular, real-time data to help improve their marketing programs. By automating and streamlining their sales, marketing, and finance, executing marketing campaigns became easy. On the eCommerce side of the Challenger website, shoppers needed a better and more engaging experience navigating the store as a result of a cutting edge, engaging and robust CMS.
The numbers
15,973,641
Campaign Emails
1,306,391
Products Sold
178
Admin Users
1,697,007
Notification Emails
33,054
Unique Events in 2016
20,350
Partnering Organizations
4,952
Total Coordinators
33,054
Unique Events in 2016
20,350
Partnering Organizations
4,952
Total Coordinators
Company profile
Challenger Sports provides players, coaches, parents and administrators a soccer experience that caters to everyone involved in the game. Challenger Sports is owned and operated by some of the most experienced soccer people in the US with approximately 1,200 British and 100 Brazilian coaches that are selected by Challenger’s overseas staff. The Challenger Sports mission is “To Ignite In All Children A Passion For Sports.”
The challenge
The question for Peter Arch, CEO Challenger Sports, was how to create a central place from which all people in the organization had access to customer data. When one person made an update, no one knew about it because so much was done manually. Instead of using spreadsheets to update customer information, the team needed a platform in which they can keep records in one place and make that data available across the entire organization.
We weren’t able to gather data and reporting on how effectively we were executing on our programs because we didn’t have visibility on where customers were in their decision-making journey.
We wanted to be a data company; a company that took the guesswork out of program execution and instead focused on hard metrics. Without this ability, we couldn’t benchmark our successes and see how we’ve improved over time.
George Anderson – Motorsport Park Hastings
Another problem was that messages that were being sent out to past campers for new registration weren’t being recorded and monitored, and as a result weren’t helping in predicting the effectiveness of future campaigns. With hundreds of thousands of contacts to email, Challenger sports needed more targeted and personalized messages to communicate with each customer depending on their past purchasing history.
Finally, for Challenger Sports, it was important to better manage their sign-ups from the eCommerce store. The set-up of the store wasn’t intuitive and user-friendly. With a large array of products, visitors were having trouble with navigation. The store that was being used was lacking in on-site search functionality and a disorganization of merchandise.
Ultimately, Configio was selected because of its ability to organize customers and customer data in a central database, make sign-up and messaging easy, and work with real, hard metrics to benchmark results.
The solution
Tasked with finding the best CRM solution, Arch sought a system that was organized, customizable and scalable. Organized for the reasons that they needed to have customer data that was easy to find by all across the organization – from marketing, to sales, to finance. Customizable, so that they could configure the CRM to their needs. And scalable, so as they continue to grow their database, the platform would be robust enough to grow with growing data.
CRM adoption
Dealing with record-keeping problems, in which any additions to customer data that were made by one team member weren’t automatically visible cross-departmentally, the adoption of Configio enabled Challenger Sports to rid themselves of Excel spreadsheets and work on keeping and updating customer data from a single, central location.
Reporting + analytics
With Configio, Challenger Sports was able to get rid of all the tedious, repetitive tasks of their marketing programs and was able to create automated progress reports while benchmarking their successes to help them further improve. The progress reports were visible to C-level executives providing complete visibility into areas that have been successful and those that had room for improvement. The team was able to save time on creating and executing programs at a quicker and more efficient rate.
eCommerce store
Configio enabled Challenger Sports to create a more user-friendly way of registering for programs. The sign-up process and the checkout process were simple and easy to navigate through, and the shop became a place where shoppers could quickly and efficiently purchase merchandise.
The results
The all-in-one system enabled the organization to do everything that related to marketing, sales and finance – and this has become the biggest contributor to our success to date.
Peter Arch, CEO Challenger Sports
With Configio, Challenger Sports was able to work with a customized CRM solution that was flexible, reliable and scalable. Challenger Sports was able to avoid downtime and run its business more comfortably. It evolved internal teams and their processes, and helped the company become more mature, sophisticated and data-based.
The CRM worked well for internal processes as well such as when there were staff turnover or regional business management adjustments – all the data could be documented in the CRM. The database held all internal correspondence so that management can use it to ensure staff are completing their daily tasks.
By hiring a dedicated person to lead Configio’s new system, Challenger was able to cut down the size of the marketing team making it more productive and efficient, saving on both time and money.
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