Mike Daniel

President & CEO, Sportable Scoreboards

Supernova Award Category: 

Digital Marketing and Sales Effectiveness

The Organization: 

Sportable manufactures 6,000 made-to-order scoreboards each year for every indoor and outdoor sport imaginable. By doubling its production, Sportable hopes to positively impact twice as many communities across America. So how does a business plan to double in size in a market that may not be able to afford the product it sells? Sportable prides itself on meeting its customers on their own playing fields. To do so, the company created a Score Rewards program that helps schools sell advertising space on their scoreboard to offset costs. They also implemented a long-term finance program for more expensive models. But to double growth, Sportable realized it had to transform the way it operated, in hopes of finding efficiencies and cost savings that it could pass on to its customers.

The Problem: 

Sportable was using a system that was severely outdated and in particular, was not compatible with Microsoft 10. The system was also unable to produce one clear, customer data record – and this lack of a “single source of customer truth” when accessing their customers’ info – sales and service activities were jumbled together – making it more difficult than necessary and slowing down Sportable’s sales and service teams. In addition to technology constraints, senior leaders also recognized the need to adopt a modern sales and service system that would enable them to transform their business. The company is at a point where executives realize the business need to embrace technology as part of a larger initiative to reach a new level of maturity in their business. Executives recognized the need to embrace technology as part of this digital transformation – as this will drive revenue and ensure sales and service have clean customer data. With improved sales and service technology – both sales and service teams can work more quickly to up-sell/cross-sell and service existing customers as well as use opportunity, contact and account management within Engagement Cloud to enable sales team to make net-new sales with the ultimate goal to double its growth.

The Solution: 

They have separate sales and service orgs, but given that before there wasn't any one single source of truth – or one clean customer record (e.g. with old system, if sales and/or service were to access the customer’s entire history – the data would be a jumbled mess).  Once a sale is made and scoreboard is installed, the product is then tracked as assets so if service tech sees customer needs a new part, he is credited with this sale and installs necessary parts/performs required service. 

If a customer is interested in new scoreboards, the service tech captures this information – so it becomes a lead/prospect – associated with existing customer;  this lead is routed to original sales person to follow up.  Also using CPQ to generate quotes. 

 

The Results: 

This data transparency and accuracy has had an immediate impact at Sportable. By integrating Oracle Marketing Cloud and Oracle Engagement Cloud, website traffic increased and sales reps are pursuing higher quality leads. Order precision improved with Oracle CPQ Cloud and Oracle ERP Cloud, reducing waste and required man power. Oracle Order Management Cloud, Oracle Manufacturing Cloud, and Oracle Supply Chain Cloud help ease order fulfillment, shipping the right product to the right customer, quickly. For the first time ever, accounting and financial teams can access the same data as their colleagues in sales and service with Oracle Financials Cloud, eliminating confusion caused by thousands of duplicate records.

Sportable has transformed its customer experience, removing all the barriers and complexity to finding a product that meets its customers’ unique needs at an affordable price point. The company guides each school or parks director through a simple quoting and order process, shipping a scoreboard, configured for lights, horns, and team colors to the field or arena in just 10 days, whereas its competitors take easily twice as long to deliver a product. Should the customer encounter any issues with set-up or maintenance, Sportable’s service department is on hand 24/7 so the inquiring coach or parent can get back to what’s really important – game day.

Metrics: 

The company guides each school or parks director through a simple quoting and order process, shipping a scoreboard, configured for lights, horns, and team colors to the field or arena in just 10 days, whereas its competitors take easily twice as long to deliver a product. The best competitive advantage Sportable Scoreboards has is that once order is placed, the scoreboard is built in manufacturing facility and typically sent out for ship/install in as little as 48 hours. 

The Technology: 

Oracle Marketing Cloud, Engagement Cloud (Sales and Service), CPQ Cloud, ERP Cloud, Order Management Cloud, Oracle Manufacturing Cloud, and Oracle Supply Chain Cloud

Disruptive Factor: 

“We had to make radical change and radical improvements to get from where we are currently to where we want to be,” Daniel said. “We don’t want incremental change, we want to transform the way we address our business very fundamentally. There are inefficiencies, there are opportunities, and there are ways for us to reach our customers that we’ve never focused on before.”

Sportable recognized a need to up its game. Its front and back office software was outdated. The company was maintaining a dozen disparate, legacy systems that didn’t talk to each other. Costly to manage, the customized integrations between each weren’t sustainable for future growth. Each line of business was operating in an environment requiring manual data entry, duplicate records, and process inefficiencies.

 

Shining Moment: 

NA

About Your Organization

Sportable Scoreboards® is a name synonymous with excellence in the scoring industry. As one of America's largest and most trusted scoreboard manufacturers, we have exceeded the scoring needs of organizations like yours for over two decades. Sportable Scoreboards' proud heritage dates back to 1986 when we witnessed the need for portable scoreboards at youth sporting events.