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Bringing Innovation to Every Game, Set, and Match

Rushenka Perera — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 00:56:29 +0000

Recently on , I caught up with Ashley Keber, Vice President of Member Relations for Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), and Milan Černý, Director of Strategic Partnerships for �鶹ԭ�� Global Sponsorships. in helping professional women’s tennis players stay connected and safe during COVID-19 and beyond.

Ashley joined the WTA over 20 years ago when it was just starting its player development program. “Player development is anchored in the sport sciences and focuses on the holistic development of an athlete, on and off the court,” she explained. “I’ve loved being on the ground level of the development of a new field, which has been exciting and terrifying. And my role has evolved over the years with the WTA.”

Milan began as a consultant for business analytics before moving into ��’s global sponsorship, including tennis, where he builds showcases and technologies for partners like the WTA. “For two years now I’ve been managing the entire partnership,” he said. “I feel extremely lucky as well to be working with partners like the WTA. It’s a very interesting program for us at �鶹ԭ�� in order to showcase technology and to work with an innovative association like the WTA.

https://player.whooshkaa.com/episode?id=738288

Ashley and Milan agreed that the impact of COVID-19 has forced sports around the world adapt rapidly in order to minimise risks while keeping all athletes, staff, and fans safe. “The WTA had to take an honest look at what we could control and leaned into those opportunities,” Ashley said. “We immediately ramped up our communication with our partners, our players, and our tournaments to talk about what we knew and what we didn’t know. That led us to being, we think, resourceful and collaborative.

“We asked, how do you play without fans, how do you move players from one country to another during a pandemic?

We then used our resources to work with some of the best experts in the world to design our protocols for how we’re going to return to play. That brings us to communication and educating all our constituents in what will this new normal look like?

That’s where ��’s resources and technology came into play and really helped us underpin through the platform and the tool. We got out to our members, communicated with them and educated them about this new normal.”

Milan noted that this new normal evolved through forced adaptation but has been simplified through digital technology and data analytics. “This year gave us a completely new challenge of facing a pandemic and the tour being on pause,” he added. “With us being a partner to the WTA, we’re able to provide them with solutions to challenges that came up, not only this year, but in general.

In talking about educating players, providing a training platform, �鶹ԭ�� Litmos was really a great solution that we could offer to WTA and we think it was a very successful launch. Looking at �鶹ԭ�� Qualtrics, that case has been great this year. WTA are starting to work with it as we speak since they’ve already put out some surveys.

“When we look back on the past few years, all the analytics that are relevant to the players and coaches and are obviously still available even when no matches are being played, no tournaments being played. That time is being used by players with their coaches to look into strategies and tactics, which is where our software solutions based on data that comes from off the court really comes into play. They provide them with the right tools to be efficient in their coaching and improve on things to come.”

According to Ashley, the changing circumstances and needs of WTA members worldwide also led to the . “Our philosophy is that if you want to encourage and set people up to be successful, they need to make good decisions, and good decision making requires information, knowledge, and experience,” Ashley said. “That’s really where the WTA University comes in. It runs on the Litmus platform and that’s helped us meet the needs of a modern learner.

“Because we’ve been at this game for a while, the WTA has conducted some longitudinal-based studies, the most recent we did with �鶹ԭ�� and their data scientists. What we found through the research is that players that participated in the WTA player development programs actually enjoy longer careers and an increased frequency of professional behaviours in the environment.

When you have proven results and you know what you’re doing in making an impact, you obviously want to do more of that and reach more people, which bring us back to �鶹ԭ�� Litmos – a platform that’s so robust it really gave us an opportunity to launch our WTA University in a new way.”

Ashley also noted that the ability to remotely support WTA members extended beyond their mental and physical wellbeing. “During the pandemic, where we used to do courses in person and workshops, we started offering them online. Examples such as financial planning, an international tax course, or media and brand building, mentoring and leadership, or those mental health and physical fitness classes that I mentioned earlier.

“Each time we would offer a class, the player would come back and take the next one, which I think is the best form of advertising because they found it valuable and they want to invest their time there as well. I think that’s a credit to how easy the resources and tools �鶹ԭ�� made available to us for the end user to take advantage of.”

To hear more from my discussion with Ashley and Milan, check out our .

If you’d like to learn more about innovations being utilised in this new normal, Effect 2020 will be exploring the technologies and practices that have helped people adapt and become more resilient to future change. Learn more about Effect’s dedicated episode to Innovation that will feature WTA World Number 1 player Ash Barty and .

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Innovating to Optimise Performance: The winning formula of the pros

�鶹ԭ�� News — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 04:45:32 +0000

Success. We all want it. Our personal and professional lives demand the best of ourselves and those around us. For many, it means asking eternal questions. For a subset, it means asking these questions again and again, and striving each time to discover a better answer than before.

How can I be and continue to be the best version of me? How do I ensure the same for my business? What actions should I take to ensure my business runs smarter, more efficiently with maximum productivity? How can we maintain total focus, stay ahead of the game and guarantee peak performance to achieve and improve upon brilliant results?

These questions endure because there is never a single, final answer. Embracing a more innovative approach is always a possibility, and will be a topic of discussion at �鶹ԭ��’s upcoming

The environment of elite sport may seem far removed from boardrooms and strategic planning sessions, but the recent drive in in all areas of tennis by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), the organising body for the professional women’s game, is driven by the same motivating factors and principles found in the modern, agile business world. And the commonalities and learnings show that innovation transcends industries,and is an essential part of every business strategy optimised to win.

Best in class – and staying there
For athletes, the dogged pursuit of excellence and unwavering determination to play with power, precision and touch time and time again – and ultimately win – means new approaches to training are readily embraced. Off centre court, traditional techniques are being blended with the latest training tools and technologies to produce that winning formula. And when it comes to performance on court, innovation is at its core.

“WTA players recognise the value of having the most innovative technology to help improve their performance,” says WTA president Micky Lawler.

No stranger to sizing up the competition, Lawler is concentrated on the global marketing strategy of the WTA, uncovering new connections and overseeing an impressive portfolio of long-standing partnerships.

“It’s not only imperative to stay in the game, but in order to lead women’s tennis into the future and thrive, innovation is paramount,” Lawler says.

“We already know how incredible tennis is, but without embracing novel ways to play, consume and market the sport, we can’t inspire a new audience to invest.”

The WTA delivers tennis analytics to the game with real-time, in-match statistical analysis and insight for coaches via �鶹ԭ�� software, and recently the ability to go beyond single-point analysis with the rollout of a new coaching tool called Patterns of Play.

“The latest feature addresses a key need for coaches looking for data-based insights into how a rally unfolds and how their player, and opponents, react to match situations,” Lawler says. “It also enables coaches to personalise insights for their player’s next match by going deeper into the data and applying various filters and customisations, spanning opponents, opponent’s rank, playing hand, playing surface and more.”

To Lawler, technology – and the ability to use and make sense of the data being generated with every moment of play – is a game changer. Literally.

“Before Tennis Analytics, professional tennis did not have access to real-time performance data during live match play…This vital information delivers fact-based feedback to the player that can really shape how a player adjusts and manages the outcome of the match.”

And it’s not just the sporting world identifying the transformative potential of data-driven decision-making. It’s a priority for leading organisations, with a recent finding that top financial performers reported being 25% more likely to have the data needed to improve upon analytics-based decision-making.

Unlocking new possibilities
Technology has not only benefited tennis players and managers of the game, but also those at the receiving end – the spectators who ultimately get to enjoy an even higher calibre of sport.

“We’re particularly excited about our latest endeavor in using Qualtrics experience management technology,” Lawler says. “Without giving too much away, it’s a highly advanced survey tool that we recently started using and it will certainly play an integral role in fuelling women’s professional tennis into the future, including how we work with players, staff, coaches and how we operate with tournaments, media and especially fans.”

When it comes to the viewing experience at home, innovation in over-the-top (OTT) video streaming has served the existing fanbase well, but crucially has opened fresh avenues to attract growth.

“OTT has allowed us infinite ways to engage fans,” Lawler says. “It has unlocked new possibilities for how we can work with our rights holders, how we manage our digital channels, and how we collaborate with our partner, players and tournaments.”

As industries start to make sense of the data they possess, customer-centric avenues for growth will only continue to expand. As the WTA has demonstrated, it’s about understanding how customers (or fans) want to engage and enabling that.

Overcoming obstacles through innovation
With the right technology behind the scenes, the WTA’s top players can run like well-oiled machines and more likely serve that winning ace. However, changing the game hasn’t come without its challenges. Indeed, integral to innovating is a deep desire to overcome obstacles.

“Implementing new technology ultimately leads to growth but there will always be an adjustment and adoption phase to navigate,” Lawler says. “With , we’re extremely fortunate to have partners who truly work through that stage of the game with us.”

Harnessing the power of data and technology in a quest to achieve perfection isn’t unique to the tennis world – it’s also the driving force of today’s competitive global business market. According to a by management consulting firm BCG, leaders of about half of the world’s most innovative companies such as Apple, Amazon and Alphabet posit investing in innovation as the top priority in 2020.

It’s an agenda perhaps more crucial today than ever, with the Covid-19 crisis willing leaders to adapt quickly to tackle shifting supply and demand patterns, and changing consumer behaviour. Although the crisis has undeniably thrown a curveball, Lawler believes being in lockdown has allowed innovation opportunities to surface.

Despite tennis matches taking a timeout, the WTA’s player development team and swiftly launched a new learning management system powered by �鶹ԭ�� Litmos for its players, coaches and staff. The WTA University interactive platform supports specifically designed personal and professional wellness tools for athletes.

“These athletes are resilient, ambitious and pursue perfection,” Lawler says. “So even though the season temporarily stopped, their competitive nature did not. The goal is to keep pushing forward, think outside the box and lean into wild ideas that will get you there.”

Join the WTA No 1 Ash Barty in conversation at �鶹ԭ�� e’ffect next month on October 1st.

This article was produced for �鶹ԭ�� by , the commercial content division of BBC Global News.

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