Thinking of Switching Retail Platforms in Time for the New Football Season?

If you are considering migrating your retail system to a new provider before the start of the football season this summer but have reservations about how long it could take and how much work it could generate, read on to find out what is involved and when you need to get started.

We caught up with Lee Hyde, Sports Solution Lead at ClearCourse Sports, to answer some common questions around switching retail platforms.

What could migrating our existing platform to the ClearCourse Sports solution achieve for our club operations?

“Switching your existing legacy platform to the ClearCourse Sports solution would give you access to our market-leading software, allowing your club to drive revenues, automate existing manual processes and increase efficiency throughout your operations and delivery teams. We know that many legacy solutions lack the functionality, efficiencies and speed required to maintain a modern-day, slick, business unit. 



“System performance and user experience are two of our many priorities within ClearCourse Sports. Our feature-rich spec is built specifically for the sports and stadium environment and contains everything needed to drive your business growth. Whether it’s inventory control solutions which are built for true merchandisers, our vast reporting suite which has been developed to ensure you don’t waste time running various reports to get the figures you need, or our market-leading eCommerce solution which will elevate your digital shop front and user experience, ClearCourse Sports is developed with a forward-thinking and future-proofed strategy to ensure you will always have the exact tools you need to maximise your use of software.”

If we want to implement ClearCourse Sports ahead of the new season, when do I need to be making final decisions?

“Ideally, ASAP. We’ve already been working with clients for a couple of months on projects which are to be delivered in between the current season finishing and the new season starting. 

“As a guide, we usually forecast 16-weeks from contract and sales order signatures to delivery of a full project. We don’t like to quote less than this as we want to ensure that we’re not pressuring any of the standard process in delivering a platform migration. 



“Naturally, each project is unique so there may be a small amount of timesaving from one project to another but it’s always advisable to work on our standard quoted lead-times. Given that the initial stages of setting up product demonstrations, working sessions and providing full project estimates can also add to this timescale, we’d advise anybody seriously considering a migration to get in touch immediately!”

Is there still time to migrate before our major peak of kit launch, ahead of the new 2023/24 season?

“This would depend on a number of factors, with the most important being speed! If you’re able to commence exploratory calls and meetings where we can learn about your project, advise you on our solution and give you a product demonstration within a very short timescale, we’d ultimately maximise the amount of time ahead of your peak to be able to agree and deliver the project. 



“The timing of your kit launches is also key to this discussion. If these are fluid and can be dictated by the timelines of the project, all the better. If the launches are already planned in and can’t be moved, we would need to assess our critical path for project delivery and we’d have to guide you on some very narrow windows for meetings, discussions and ultimately signing off the project to ensure we could work to your timescales. We would always be transparent with you and inform you if we reached a point where we could no longer guarantee a go-live ahead of kit launches. However, it would be our target to ensure you can launch your new kits with a bang on our ClearCourse Sports platform to allow you could capitalise on boosting sales with our extensive functionality and performance.”

What would the process involve?

“As with all our clients, we’d want to understand your club’s operation and ensure that your solution is tailored to your exact requirements. Our modular approach allows us to be able to offer a full suite of software solutions or a number of our modules which integrate into other 3^rd party software platforms used throughout the club. We’d start our process by exploring what is in place currently and what you’re looking to achieve with our solution.

“Once we’ve completed the exploratory process, we’d provide a full demonstration of our products and compile a suggested approach in terms of the elements of the ClearCourse Sports solution that we feel would best suit your requirements and ambitions. This would be provided with a full commercial estimate for the project, including any CAPEX value and monthly OPEX SaaS fees. 

“We’d be on hand to answer any follow-up questions that your team would have and give you all of the information needed in terms of making a decision on the project. As we’d be working to tight timescales, we’d likely provide a deadline date that we’d need a decision made by and a signed-off agreement in place by in order to achieve the go-live dates driven by your business requirements. This isn’t a sales tactic; we don’t believe in those – our software speaks for itself. It’s us being transparent and setting realistic expectations from the very start.

“Upon deciding that you’d like to migrate to our platform, we would pull together our project team, including highly qualified senior project managers, account managers and key points of contact. We’d start with a “kick off” call with your appointed project team and key decision makers and start guiding you on our project journey and timescales. We’d have very regular communication with you and plan in a weekly progress call throughout the project to ensure we’re making the necessary progress throughout.



“As go-live approaches we will carry out the final testing, full training and sign-off, before standing by your side through the go-live process. We’d have on-site support to ensure a faultless start to life on our solution. Once settled and confidently operational, the projects team would hand over to your regular account management contact (who will have been involved throughout the project phase) and our excellent in-house dedicated support team.”

Would this create lots of extra work for our team?

“Naturally, when delivering a collaborative project there will be an element of undertaking required from the Club staff resource. However, through effective and efficient project management, we will guide the key stakeholders through every step of the project and focus their attention on the key tasks and decisions. This is mostly from a user testing perspective to ensure we’re providing the solution which has been scoped and this operates in the way the Club require. We can help your team plan their time and even guide on how many hours of staff resource are likely needed for each given task.

“You will receive a project timeline showing which weeks of the project we’d need club staff to spend a little time on related tasks so that this can be planned in well ahead of the requirements.



“It’s our aim to make the platform migration as stress-free and unintrusive as possible, allowing your team to focus on their continuing day to day roles.”

Would we lose everything we have in our current system, and would the fans be impacted?

“In a word, no. This is somewhat dependent upon the existing legacy system that is in place and the data contained within it. It’s highly likely that we would be able to take a full data extract from your existing solution and use this as a starting point for product setup, fan account data and historical sales records. This is often a great time to cleanse existing data and tidy up the information within the system with a spot of housekeeping, prior to us importing this into the ClearCourse Sports platform.

“In some cases, we’re even able to import your existing fan accounts and passwords. This ensures there is no loss of fan accounts and no requirement for fans to re-register, with the risk of some not carrying out this step and the subsequent shrinking of your available data pool.



“Our aim would be to retain as much of your historical sales, product and fan account data as you wish.”

Want to know more?

Read the in-depth feature article from the October 2022 edition of fcbusiness, page 26: A New Era in Stadia Commerce Solutions.

If you are dreaming of a new retail system in time for the season kick off, get in touch today.