Key findings for data-driven insights at ADO Den Haag

As a football club, ADO Den Haag is known for its green and yellow colours and the characteristic stork. However, what many people do not know is that behind the scenes ADO Den Haag is undergoing a true data transformation. The club wants to gain more data-driven insights into its performance, so that it can better anticipate and steer. The first step is the automation of manual overviews and the creation of dashboards in Power BI.

Fact-based management

Jachin Wildemans, CFO of ADO Den Haag, has a clear vision: “We want to move towards an organisation that thinks things through in advance, sets objectives and checks whether those objectives are achieved. Ultimately, as a financial institution, you want to talk about matters that are based on facts. In football, that is still quite complicated, because there is a lot of emotion involved. Nevertheless, we want to use data to steer more towards the facts.

The first step is to create dashboards with data-driven insights. In addition to creating dashboards, Rockfeather has also helped ADO Den Haag by providing predictive data. For example, a so-called churn model was created, which, based on Machine Learning, can predict season ticket cancellations with 80% certainty. Click here to read more about the data science case at ADO Den Haag and read how data-driven insights helped them to get more grip on data.

Dashboards as a strategic tool

The insights from the dashboards support the new strategy of ADO Den Haag. “As a professional football company, we want to continuously develop and improve. We have long-term goals, such as a higher occupancy rate in the Cars Jeans Stadium, of which we want to measure whether we are on track. We need these kinds of tools to realize that,” says Jachin.

The dashboards are not a separate goal but are part of a holistic vision. Jachin: “Dashboarding helps us to implement the ‘plan, do, check, act’ method. The information from the dashboards is an important precondition for this. Without ‘check’, the cycle does not work.” Glenn Versteegh, as a consultant from Rockfeather closely involved in the implementation of the dashboards, agrees: “It is crucial in dashboarding to first determine the goal and to access the data. Only then can you start building’.

Insights for the entire organization

The dashboards will not only help the finance department but also many other departments to steer more data-driven. Think of ticketing, hospitality, HR, marketing and sales. “We have a lot of data, but we were not getting enough information out of it. Thanks to the dashboards and the churn model, we have gone from ad hoc data analysis to structural information, allowing each individual department to steer better,” says Jachin.

Robin Burgman, Marketing Manager at ADO Den Haag, also sees the value of structural data-driven insights. “It is very nice for us to have this information, so we know how to interact with the different target groups.”

Combining data sources using Alteryx

As a football club, ADO Den Haag works with many different systems that all generate data. For example, there is a special ticketing system, a cash register system and an ERP system. The data from all these systems cannot immediately be used to build dashboards and predictive models.

The data from the various sources is accessed and cleansed with Alteryx. Glenn: “With Alteryx we can access, cleanse and export the data. By doing this, we ensure that we can use the data in the dashboards. Then we analyse and share the data via dashboards in Power BI.”

More data awareness within the organisation

The dashboards are already producing results. “I want everyone to talk about the same data, use money as efficiently as possible, think about what investments will yield the best return and check whether that is the case,” says Jachin. “We are going to take that step now, by forcing people to look at the same numbers. That will make it easier not only for me but for everyone.”

However, this is only the start, says Jachin: “I expect more insights at a later stage. If you are structurally confronted with the same information, you start asking different questions.”

The introduction of dashboarding at ADO Den Haag has a nice side effect: it immediately creates more data awareness. Jachin: “Take the Hospitality & Events department. Just thinking about the dashboards forces them to think more in terms of data. I think that is a good development: it is a step towards more data-consciousness within the organisation.

Start the journey to data-driven management with Power BI

Jachin is enthusiastic about the collaboration with Rockfeather. “We don’t have the resources or the size to have this kind of expertise in-house. It’s nice that Rockfeather adds value with their knowledge, and they do it in a pleasant way.”

Asked for advice for other organisations, Jachin is clear: “I would definitely advise making dashboarding (more) important in your organisation as this will cause people to start thinking about what they are doing on a daily basis, and what they can focus on. When are you successful in your job, and what data can you use to judge that? If you start that journey to structural management, you will be better off as a person, as a department and as an organisation.

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