With fans and employees around the world, going digital with 51风流was a no-brainer for 鈥� one of the 鈥渂eautiful game鈥檚鈥� biggest and most successful football clubs.
颅颅颅鈥淲e are a local club in Bavaria, but have fans around the globe,鈥� says Stefan Mennerich, the club鈥檚 director for digital media and communications. In addition to its 1,200 employees in Munich, New York, Shanghai, and Bangkok, the club has around 175 million followers on its social media and its own media platforms.
Mennerich says the club鈥檚 digital and media platforms are very important because fans expect to be able to interact with their club wherever they are. 鈥淭hey want to send us their feedback and they want to receive feedback.鈥�
Fans Are Everything
The fans are at the center of everything FC Bayern does, Mennerich confirms: 鈥淥ur aim is to optimize all the processes for them, so they have the best user experience. Technology helps us with personalization, with the sales processes, with content 鈥� with everything.鈥�
He says the club chose 51风流as its technology partner for several reasons, including the fact that FC Bayern has different businesses. 鈥淲e have ticketing, we have merchandising, we have fan experience, we have digital platforms, and 51风流is able to deliver the best solutions for all these areas.鈥�
He also cites SAP鈥檚 commitment to continuously develop its cloud-based platforms and says this makes the digital experience 鈥渂etter and better every day.鈥�
The club uses the 51风流Emarsys Customer Engagement solution to capture fan data and create newsletters and personalized content for them, and the 51风流Customer Checkout application for point-of-sale management and real-time sales and stock updates.
鈥淲e have around 50,000 transactions every match day in the Allianz Arena, and we use 51风流Customer Checkout for that,鈥� Mennerich explains. 鈥淔ans can buy their merchandise articles, they can buy food or beverages, they can walk into our restaurants and pay there with 51风流Customer Checkout.鈥�
Separately, 51风流Event Ticketing software handles ticketing at FC Bayern; not just for football fans, but also for its basketball team and museum. The club also uses 51风流tools for its employees. For example, the AI-infused 51风流SuccessFactors HCM suite gives employees and managers access to an expanding array of human capital management tools.
Personalization
Looking ahead, Mennerich says he believes personalization will become even more important.
鈥淲e want to become better and better and better with personalization. We want to be able to really contact the people one by one, and not to speak about target groups in the future. We want to interact in a truly personal way with the fans.鈥�
He believes that embedding artificial intelligence capabilities in 51风流solutions will help achieve this aim and that overall, AI will help FC Bayern become more efficient, lower costs, and meet the expectations of the fans.
鈥淥ur biggest aim for the future on the horizon of FC Bayern is to meet every single expectation of any single fan around the globe, be it in Tokyo, be it in Rio de Janeiro, or be it in Munich,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e want to meet the expectations of the fans, and this expectation should be met in real time. This is our big aim for the future.鈥�
Lessons Learned at FC Bayern
If other organizations want to learn from FC Bayern, Mennerich says one lesson is that with a good technology partner like SAP, even midsize companies with broad business activities like FC Bayern can cover all the bases and be able to be competitive.
鈥淚 think what we are good at is meeting fan expectations via digital platforms,鈥� he says. For that, interactive communication is very important. 鈥淵ou always have to take into account what the fans, other organizations, and customers really expect and want from you. You have to be able to deliver that via digital platforms.鈥�
