NHLPA sharpens its service edge

BY PATRICIA MACINNIS

In each National Hockey League game, thousands of event-level statistics are meticulously recorded and stored for future use and examination. Players’ performance is evaluated based on over 65 criterion, some of which include goals, assists, plus-minus, giveaways, takeaways, face-offs, time-on-ice, shifts, shutouts, saves, and a host of others.

These statistics are added to a database that, when used in conjunction with Microsoft CRM, can serve up a complete profile of any NHL player.

This database, which collects the information from each game, is hosted by the National Hockey League Player’s Association, or NHLPA, the labor union that represents professional hockey players. The Toronto-based NHLPA maintains personal and career information on nearly 15,000 current, past, and prospect NHL players, collecting and maintaining a database of private information including over 15,000 SPCs (Standard Player Contracts), 15,000 SPACs (Standard Player Agent Contracts), and 100,000 career transactions that both players and their representatives – but not the public – can access on a private intranet.

These combined millions of collected records serve both the internal needs of the NHLPA as well as hockey enthusiasts, NHL players and their agents, all of whom can access detailed information on an individual player through nhlpa.com, or in the case of more sensitive information, a private intranet accessible only by players and agents.

Until recently, the NHLPA was using an antiquated, proprietary software system that served as the platform to amalgamate and access player information. The system fed a range of standard, internal reports as well as the public and private Web sites.

“The legacy system was no longer serving our organization’s needs, lacking proper vendor support, failing to adapt to change within the business of hockey, and experiencing a host of integration issues with existing applications and emerging technologies,” says Stephen Frank, the NHLPA’s Director of Information Technology.

“In short, the NHLPA needed a system that was more than a just a solution that satisfied current day operations,” indicates Frank. “It needed a sustainable solution that would grow with the needs of the organization and its membership and provide a solid foundation for future development plans involving nhlpa.com. Microsoft’s CRM system was all that and more.”

Because the NHLPA is a Microsoft shop from “top to bottom” Frank says the degree of integration was an attractive feature of Microsoft’s solution.

The project formally kicked off in October 2008 when Microsoft introduced Frank to Pavliks.com, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner located in Barrie, ON.

Pavliks.com is a small service provider with a staff of about 25 that has two main lines of business: The infrastructure team sells, implements and services Hewlett-Packard hardware; and on the custom application development side of the business they implement a variety of software packages, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Engineers and management from Pavliks.com interviewed key NHLPA stakeholders to get a handle on their requirements and to make suggestions for improvements in workflows in the new CRM system.

“Most of the development work took place remotely,” explains Steve Vickerage, vice-president of operations for Pavliks.com. “Every now and then we went on site to train various workgroups.”

Frank adds that Pavliks.com “mirrored” the look and feel of the previous system to minimize the learning curve for users. “We didn’t want a big difference in the user interface; we recognized that this would go a long way in user adoption and acceptance.”

Even though the NHLPA is a relatively small organization, it collects and manages mountains of data on its 15,000 current, past, and prospect players, says Vickerage.

A robust CRM system would become the platform from which all that data could be seamlessly accessed, something that presented challenges with the older system.

“It’s a common scenario,” says Vickerage. “Custom-built applications were built by a single vendor and modified over the years, and it’s very costly to take that application to a new vendor and have them support it.”

Because Microsoft’s CRM solution is a standard tool built with .Net, it provides a level of flexibility and integration with existing systems that the NHLPA couldn’t achieve with the legacy system.

“If you boil down CRM into its primary function, it’s tracking people,” Vickerage adds. “That’s what they’re doing in a nutshell – they’re tracking their members, their contracts and their milestones. Customer relationship management software was a great fit.”

Tim Hickernell is not surprised the NHLPA opted for Microsoft CRM. The Lead Analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ontario, says version 4 of the software was rewritten from the ground up and is garnering a lot of attention from business.

In a recently published CRM study by Info-Tech, Hickernell says Microsoft’s CRM software came out No. 1, both in terms of mindshare and marketshare.

“We asked our clients which CRM package they had installed or were planning to install in the next 12 months. Microsoft came out on top, and that tells you how the market has changed in the last couple of years,” says Hickernell. Two and a half years ago, when Info-Tech last studied the topic in-depth, Hickernell says Microsoft’s CRM solution wasn’t even on the radar.

“The latest version is optimized for Web delivery and integration with Outlook is extreme,” he says. Microsoft came out of nowhere with this, and now they’re a leader, alongside Salesforce.com.”

One of the keys to Microsoft’s success with this version, says Hickernell, is the hybrid delivery option, which allows developers to create applications in either on-demand or on-premise mode, depending on the circumstances. “That’s a big deal,” says Hickernell. “Developers like being able to develop online and not have to make a huge investment for a large enterprise application. More and more smaller developers can do stuff online and port to on-premise. It saves them a bundle of money.”

Pavliks.com created a three-phase project plan for the NHLPA, which included a review of operations, development of the CRM application and integration of the CRM system with the existing Web sites – along with a quote for each of the phases.

“The bulk of the project time was spent on developing the application and migrating the data from the legacy system,” says Frank, a process that began in January 2009 and spanned nine months until the system went live in September.

Frank says Pavliks.com was a good fit for the NHLPA because of its previous experience with other professional sporting organizations, namely the Miami Dolphins.

“Pavliks.com has done an excellent job and a lot of the credit goes to Scott Whynot at Pavliks.com,” says Frank. “He’s worked with other professional sporting organizations, and it was really important in bringing this project to fruition.”

Today, Frank says, the NHLPA has a system that serves its current needs and will enable it to take better advantage of social networking tools in the future, something he says is a top priority for the organization.

“Aside from the broad stroke of much better integration, there’s been a huge increase in the ability of the end user to satisfy their own queries,” says Frank. Batch routines that used to take hours to produce can now be executed in a couple of minutes.

“The users love it. They’re truly empowered now.”