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FC Köln is one of the best-known professional soccer clubs in Germany. As one of the original members of the Deutsche Bundesliga, FC Köln still claims a growing regional following. Despite its reputation on the pitch, the club’s business management systems struggled to support its growing fan base and increasing sports merchandising turnover. In early 2004, it implemented Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV, with additional features suited to a modern soccer club.

Business Needs

FC Köln is one of Germany’s best-established soccer clubs and a founder member of the Bundesliga (premier league). With a membership of 35,000 fans and average home crowds of 40,000, the club earns revenue of between €30 million (U.S.$43.5 million) and €50 million a year depending on league membership. As a business with 80 staff, excluding players, FC Köln needed to modernize its enterprise management systems to serve its supporters with a wider range of services including merchandise. Like other top-flight German clubs before them—Borussia Dortmund and Bayern München—FC Köln also changed its governance to become an association limited by stocks.

Previously, the club relied on a whole series of isolated business applications with data stored in different locations. “Our various departments such as bookkeeping, ticketing, membership, and club administration all had disparate systems,” says Oliver Leki, Commercial Director, FC Köln. “Part of this range had been developed in-house with limited interface features. As a result, the amount of time spent carrying out manual operations was very high.”

Among the challenges faced by staff were:

• The club’s IT system was failing to keep pace with increases in membership, merchandising opportunities, and the administration needed for the new professional structures.
• Data was not centrally available—collecting it was time consuming and error prone, and sometimes produced conflicting information.
• Managing IT in-house was diverting employees into non-core activities unrelated to the main business of running a successful European soccer club.

Solution

In 2003, FC Köln decided to introduce a single integrated business management system for the club. It chose Microsoft Dynamics NAV, having seen it in operation at Borussia Dortmund. Instead of developing the software in-house, FC Köln opted to outsource its IT to Pironet NDH, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner in Germany specialized in software as a shared service. The club agreed a mixture of standard hosting with Pironet NDH—the transfer of the club’s own systems and leased components within the Microsoft software-as-a-service contract.

“IT is far from being one of our core skills,” says Leki. “Outsourcing to a service provider is not only cost effective for us, but provides peace of mind through a guarantee of reliable and better data security.”

Implementation began in early 2004, and took six months, with a major challenge around integration with existing systems. “For advance ticket sales, we added an interface to Microsoft Dynamics NAV to transfer daily sales into the accounting system,” says Leki. With merchandising, the club decided to outsource the purchase, storage, and dispatch of goods to a logistics services company. It also needed a special component for Microsoft Dynamics NAV to provide comprehensive process integration across the whole range of operations.

“The structures in our accounts department were not designed for professional soccer,” says Leki. “That’s why we reorganized our overall system along the lines of those used by other clubs and associations. Microsoft Dynamics NAV is the ideal solution.”

Benefits

With around 40 workstations using the new system on several different sites, including three shops, the club is enjoying higher productivity and greater efficiency. Recently, FC Köln added 15,000 new members. The number of season ticket holders also increased to more than 20,000. “Without automating our processes with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, we would never have been able to cope with the growing volume of work. We used to have to get by with just a few reports,” says Leki. “Now we can deal with special questions such as the distance between our fans’ home addresses and the stadium, at the click of a mouse.”

Benefits of the new hosting partnership experienced by the club include:

• Flexible and scalable system—the club says that due to Microsoft Dynamics NAV and the hosting concept it can quickly react to any changes in the business.
• Improved commercial data—the club benefits from better and richer data not only on marketing, but also on routine financial management, such as having a clear picture of receivable income.
• New point-of-sale (POS) system—the three shops selling club merchandise to supporters now automatically send POS data to head office through fast and secure connections.
• Higher productivity through automation—key staff are freed from carrying out routine IT manual processes so as to concentrate on handling higher volumes of customer demands from soccer fans.
• Additional modules for administration—the club has expanded the standard business software in Microsoft Dynamics NAV with additional modules for the administration of members, sponsors, and royalties.
• Tight integration with the Microsoft Office package—staff can now create tailored documents and communications based on data exported from Microsoft Dynamics NAV, using Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Excel® 2003 spreadsheet software and sent by using the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client.

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