The PFA’s vision.

The Professional Footballers’ Association’s (PFA) comprehensive digital transformation has sought to provide its members with a player-centric, modern service that caters to each of their personal needs and provides clear guidance at every career milestone. The PFA also sought to enhance its organizational efficiency and effectiveness by centralizing employee resources and transforming the footballers’ union into a completely paperless operation.

In its bid to transform the member and employee experiences, the PFA recognized the importance of investing in its data and digital transformation. In doing so, the footballers’ union is setting an example for its member relations, demonstrating the benefits of digital transformation across every department.

What steps were taken?

In the first quarter of 2022, the PFA appointed N3XT Sports to design and implement its data and digital transformation strategic plan for building a multi-functional, member-centric digital ecosystem. This included the deployment of the digital-only PFA Member Portal, connected with the fully integrated and scalable PFA Employee Portal and a custom-built Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) solution.

Defining the strategy.

N3XT Sports completed a thorough assessment of the players’ union’s technological infrastructure, as part of the PFA’s digital audit, and discovered that data silos, a heavy reliance on paper, and a non-scalable technology stack has been standing in the way of the PFA from presenting a clear picture of its members’ needs and coordinating its departments.

• A holistic situational analysis focused on the personnel and their relationship with internal processes and data. This required a collaborative approach whereby the PFA employees guided N3XT Sports through their daily activities, knowledge about what doesn’t work, and areas for improvement.
• Benchmarking allowed N3XT Sports and the PFA to take inspiration from other leading industry bodies and their respective technology adoption. Our team highlighted transferable insights from the National Football League Players’ Association’s (NFLPA) and National Basketball Players’ Association’s (NBPA) members’ experiences, among other non-sports entities.
• The PFA worked with N3XT Sports to outline an ideal state for its digital frameworks and carried out gap analysis to piece together a detailed digital roadmap for the development, implementation, and management of two state-of-the-art digital portals dedicated to its members and employees, underpinned by a bespoke CRM capability.

Supporting the player at every turn.

The PFA set out to develop a 360º overview of its digital ecosystem designed to recognize and assist the PFA members at key milestones in their careers. With the support of N3XT Sports, and following a thorough assessment, this incorporated the design, development, and implementation of a digital front-end member portal that significantly enhances the member-user experience.

• The PFA Member Portal allows members to access PFA services wherever and whenever they want and brings the PFA closer to its members.
• Since its implementation, the PFA Member Portal enables members to personalize their user experience (UX) and enhance their interactions with the footballers’ union in four different languages.
• The PFA Member Portal is 100 percent digital, meaning that members no longer have to print out and fill in applications, nor do they have to scan, email, or post their paperwork to request services from the PFA.
• As a result, member processing times have been dramatically reduced when completing and submitting requests for any of the PFA services, such as education grants, funding requests, and other applications.

Optimizing stakeholder management.

In order to maximize productivity and member engagement, through its assessment, N3XT Sports identified the opportunity to develop the PFA Employee Portal to empower PFA staff and leadership. N3XT Sports’ dedicated Digital Transformation department has organized workshops and committee meetings with the PFA to enhance the employee-user experience and tailor the PFA Employee Portal to specific staff workflows and preferences.

• The PFA Employee Portal increases digital and data fluency across the organization while assisting the continued professional development of the PFA employees across every department, catering to the customization of sophisticated employee workflows.
• Designed to consolidate all PFA digital resources in one location, the PFA Employee Portal integrates a wide range of applications, including the PFA Players’ Directory, the PFA Business School and Youth Academy services, and membership benefits, which present the PFA with new revenue streams.
• While presenting the PFA staff and leadership with a 360º view of member projects, a fully integrated and scalable CRM solution has significantly increased productivity and their speed of response to member applications.
• A shared calendar provides total visibility of the whole organization and its workflows, helping coordinate club and member visits across PFA departments, while the integration of dynamic dashboards provides employees with visibility of member metrics in real time.

Football’s new reality.

The PFA’s digital transformation has turned the footballers’ union into a destination for its members and is forging tangible change throughout the industry. For example, the development and integration of the PFA Players’ Directory within a digital-only, player-centric environment presented the foundations for The After Academy jobs platform, founded by professional footballer Trent Alexander-Arnold.

The After Academy, born out of the collaboration between Trent and the PFA, helps former academy players to find their first step onto the career ladder outside of football. The platform, designed and developed by N3XT Sports, draws on the PFA’s ongoing digitalization, and has turned the PFA into a destination for members such as Trent to explore how the union’s data and digital transformation can serve the broader player ecosystem.

TAA factfile:

• Our team spearheaded the design, development, and implementation of Trent’s visionary platform, combining a modern digital experience and a robust data infrastructure to deliver value for all party stakeholders.
• Partners include Liverpool Football Club, Red Bull, the PFA, Therabody, Adidas, Versus, HUGO BOSS, and N3XT Sports.
• The After Academy is working with Google to equip players with valuable career skills.

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