Modern IT systems are now an essential and integral tool in the management and administration of any successful organisation. The RFU was a ‘late starter’ in developing an IT capability and we are now playing catch up. This Plan sets out a clear and coherent approach to developing a range of tools for the game as a whole.
Role and Purpose of IT
406 Information Technology systems are now a key tool for any organisation to ensure both that effective decisions are made and that those decisions can be carried out in a cost effective manner on a 24x7 basis. Following on from this, the role of IT within the RFU can be summarised simply as follows:
• Provide the information required by the key areas of the organisation to ensure that optimum decisions are made.
• Provide the information required to measure organisational performance in all its aspects (i.e. financial, participation, performance, HR, etc.).
• Produce efficiency and productivity gains by automating manual tasks and processes.
• Optimise the processes by which the key stakeholders in the game communicate with each other.
407 Up until the recruitment of an experienced and professional IT team, starting in 2000, the RFU was undoubtedly behind the times in its exploitation of IT systems and the first major task of the new IT team was to replace the ageing and inadequate IT infrastructure with one that is robust, resilient and a suitable foundation for business critical systems. This work was completed, broadly, between 2001 and 2003. The emphasis now, in the second phase of the RFU’s IT Strategic Plan, is to develop and implement the systems to measure the RFU’s performance against its strategic objectives in the three critical areas of Elite Rugby, Community Rugby and business activities.
408 We are already well on the way to developing systems for Elite Rugby, in the form of the system known as EPAS (Elite Player Analysis System, previously known as TIPAS), which was implemented in all the Premiership clubs and centrally at the RFU in 2003/04. Regarding Community Rugby systems, although we are now underway with the planning stages, we are not as advanced in the development of Trafalgar and this will be the key priority for the foreseeable future. In addition, we have the opportunity of developing much greater knowledge of our commercial customers (match day, hospitality, merchandising, etc.) by the use of Customer Relationship Management (‘CRM’) systems.
Objectives
To ensure that all key areas of the business have the IT systems needed to measure all critical aspects of their performance
409 The IT infrastructure has been fully updated in recent years and now provides the platform necessary on which to build our ‘mission critical’ systems. Whilst modifications will be made to it on an ongoing basis, fundamentally the core of the platform will remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. Now that the required infrastructure has been built the emphasis for IT is to implement the key information systems required by the major areas of the business (Elite Rugby, Community Rugby and Commercial) to measure their performance against strategic objectives.
To ensure that the RFU website serves the communication and commercial needs of the game’s key stakeholders
410 The website has evolved at a very rapid rate since its launch and, whilst it is has been accepted by all levels of the game as an indispensable tool for communication and information dissemination, it has now reached a stage where many users find it difficult to locate what they are looking for. We believe that now is the time to undertake a fundamental review of its structure and functionality to ensure that it meets the different needs of the game’s key users.
To implement fully electronic communication to the clubs and CBs within the Plan period
411 1 July 2004 was ‘E Day’, the commencement of the process to move towards communicating electronically with the game. Following this, Council approved, on the recommendation of the Governance Committee and Management Board, a list of documents and publications which would be distributed electronically together with those that would be distributed in both soft and hard copy and those that will remain in hard copy for the time being. Whilst the pace of change will be dictated by the willingness of the Volunteer administrators to embrace the switch to new media, and we must always properly assess the impact on the Volunteers, the RFU needs to be proactive in driving forward this change.
Strategies and Plans
Complete implementation of the EPAS system and expand its use to cover all playing aspects of England and Premiership teams
412 The EPAS system is being implemented in all the England Rugby academies and centrally at the RFU and will be the main Elite Rugby IT system for the foreseeable future. The system is being used for all elite squads (including the Intermediate and Junior National Academies) and all England Rugby Academies. The key modules of the system are player administration, development tracking, playing details, fitness testing and injury and medical management. The priority for the next phase of implementation is to complete the roll-out of all the functionality to all Premiership clubs (though this needs the clubs’ buy-in), to add features identified by the Performance Department as improving the system’s functionality (e.g. video clips and a nutrition module) and to extend the system’s analysis and reporting tools.
Implement a game-wide database for Community Rugby through completion of Project Trafalgar
413 Firstwave, a system originally developed as a CRM package that is now being adapted to the sports sector by the software supplier, has been chosen as the base system for the Community Rugby database. Firstwave will provide the participation information to be used to measure the performance against the key Community Rugby participation objectives.
414 Up to now, Community Rugby has had virtually no useful information with which to monitor participant trends and, hence, measure the effectiveness of the wide variety of initiatives delivered by Community Rugby to improve the recruitment and retention of players. Data has been collected in the past for a variety of reasons in certain systems (for example the youth registration system) but these systems have never provided useful management information. As a consequence, the measurement of our success or otherwise in achieving our key participation objectives is based largely on anecdotal information. Given our financial resources this is not a situation we are willing to accept going forward and Trafalgar will be the focus for IT for the next phase of the Strategic Plan.
415 The development of Trafalgar will encompass three main areas. Firstly, further development of the website will allow clubs and CBs to input club and player information at source. Secondly, we will implement Firstwave as the system for RFU staff to use to provide critical information for the management and development of the Community game. Thirdly, by linking these areas and EPAS we will provide the tools to track an individual at all levels throughout all stages of their involvement with rugby. Trafalgar will also take data feeds from a number of other major systems, including Internet Registration, VenueMaster2, Mailorder and TicketMaster.
416 At this stage, we see the development of Trafalgar as a five stage process as follows:
i) In phase one we will replace and amalgamate the three independent and separate systems currently in operation: the clubs, officials and coaches databases into Firstwave. The system will hold details of each referee and coaching qualification and show a history of qualifications awarded to each coach or referee along with personal details of the individual. A history of courses/seminars will also be included.
ii) Phase two is the natural extension of phase one and encompasses player administration, the core of the Trafalgar system. We will replace the existing senior player registration and youth registration systems with a single module dealing with all players at whatever stage of the rugby journey.
iii) In phase three we will introduce the concept of events within the system. This will involve competition management, including the running of leagues and cup competitions. With these fixtures also included within the system, it will be possible to allocate referees to specific fixtures along with clubs or even players at certain levels. Events will also extend to other areas including training sessions, physio appointments, etc.
iv) Phase four will be an extension to the information already collected about both players and events. The player tracking system will be enhanced to cover details of medical history in more depth than is covered purely by a diary event.
v) Phase five will provide the integration between Trafalgar, EPAS and other systems not directly associated with the game’s administration, such as ticketing or merchandise systems.
417 As Trafalgar develops there will be a very significant increase in the amount of data that the organisation will be required to maintain and report on. Data volumes will be several times not only the current level but also will represent a quantum increase over the information currently on the website since, at this point, it only includes ‘static’ data on clubs and administrators. Clearly, as information on players (including schools), coaches and referees starts to be included, data volumes will grow even more substantially. It is not possible to define the data support structure needed before the system is designed in detail. However, it is important to stress that it is very likely that existing business processes will need to be re-engineered to ensure that the data is accurate.
418 For information systems to be effective very high levels of data accuracy are needed; the benchmark used by business organisations in ‘mission critical’ systems used for decision-making purposes is 99% or higher. Once data accuracy falls below this level, the resultant information becomes unreliable for decision-making and the investment in the system is largely wasted. Whatever the chosen solution for data maintenance, the requirement for high levels of data accuracy must be borne in mind.
Integrate Firstwave with Club Pages section of the website
419 As described above, Firstwave will contain the underlying database used to store all the Community Rugby participation information, a task for which the website is unsuited since it is primarily a communication and information dissemination tool, not a data storage and reporting engine. However, since the game has now grown familiar with Club Pages, it is a sensible approach to retain Club Pages as the ‘front end’ of Trafalgar, either by integrating the two systems or providing a front end to Firstwave that replicates the look and feel of Club Pages.
Implement Firstwave across all key areas of the commercial department
420 Firstwave has already been implemented as the CRM system for ERSC (although there have been a number of ‘teething’ problems which have meant that this phase was not wholly satisfactory from the users’ point of view). There are considerable commercial opportunities to be exploited by implementing the system across all our commercial business sectors.
421 It is intended that Trafalgar will capture demographic information of every game participant but, in addition, there is the opportunity to aggregate demographic data from other sources. For example, the RFU has access to contact data of members of the public who have bought tickets to rugby matches held at Twickenham Stadium through Ticketmaster, mail-order customer details and web shop customer information through Navision, local and small businesses through Dynamics. Other potential data sources include licensed hospitality operators and attendees at concerts at Twickenham Stadium. The accumulation of this data over time, its consolidation in Firstwave and the application of typical CRM functionality will allow us to develop a much better understanding of our customers and their spending patterns, with the consequent commercial benefits.
Restructure website into separate, virtual websites – RFU, Community Rugby and England Rugby
422 The future use of the website as a communication and commercial tool is, and should be, driven by the business rather than IT but it is vital that the future development of the website is integrated into the overall IT strategy. It is envisaged that, from the point of view of data gathering, the website will serve as a ‘front-end’ to Trafalgar for certain information on clubs and administrators. In addition, much of the information gathered and held within Trafalgar will be of public interest. The website can be developed into a very powerful communication tool and does provide the ability for club members to view the information that will be held in the registration and club sections within Trafalgar. This would enable players to check the accuracy of the information held about them, their clubs and their club events/fixtures and make any amendments at source.
423 This approach should ensure a greater level of data accuracy and spread the workload of the registrars over the year, rather than the current peak of activity of processing amendments after the club questionnaires are sent to clubs for checking of their players and club officials.
424 The development of the website over the last three years reflects the requirements of a number of key stakeholders from different areas of the organisation. This organic growth together with its rapid acceptance by large sections of the game as a key source of information has led to the website becoming somewhat unwieldy and difficult to navigate. We have started the project to split the website into three distinct areas, based on the differing requirements of its three major areas: Corporate & Governance (rfu.com), Community rugby (communityrugby.com) and Elite rugby (englandrugby.com) .
425 The new sites will simplify the website hierarchy and thus reduce the search time it takes a user to reach the area of information they are seeking. The restructure will also simplify future development by making it easy to add any new functionality into the correct area of the new hierarchy.
Perform annual review of the split between electronic and hard copy communication and amend as appropriate
426 Now that we have started the switch to electronic communication, we need to review regularly the most appropriate method of communicating the key information and publications issued to the clubs and CBs. It is accepted that, in deciding the pace of change, we need to be sensitive to the wishes of the Volunteer administrator, without the process being unnecessarily held up by the unreasonable objections of a very small minority. It is generally accepted that over time we will switch from paper-based to electronic communication and an annual review of the most appropriate method of distributing the key documents and publications seems a sensible way of approaching this.
Establish an IT User Group to monitor the Service Levels and Systems delivery
427 The provision of a range of IT services to the game is a significant development aimed at improving the reliability and timeliness of information, providing simplified administration procedures, providing measurement of results tools and improving communication. These new systems and services will be effective only if they are delivering what the customer wants. We will therefore set up an IT User Group to monitor service levels and system delivery. This User Group will report into the IT Steering Group and will be made up of Council Members and CB personnel.
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