Business Intelligence: New York Yankees - Iloka Benneth Chiemelie

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Read the attached scenario and using the Pressure-Response-Support Model as guide, discuss and critical evaluatehow the Management of the New York Yankees baseball club uses Business Intelligence to meet the challenges as depicts in the scenario.

In order to discuss and critical evaluate the New York Yankees baseball club scenario, it is essential that we touch on the elements of business intelligence and Pressure-Response-support model; which will serves as the bases of understanding.

Businesses across the globe have been faced with numerous issues in recent years that they have never witnessed before, and tackling these issues is important as it can determine the fate of any business success or failure. Business intelligence plays a big role in this sense because it combines business practices with advancement in technology as a platform for providing solutions to business issues (Smith, 2002; Soejarto, 2003; Zantout and Marir, 2009)

Business intelligence while it have been viewed in many ways by many practitioners and academicians can be viewed as the acquisition, and utilization of fact bases knowledge to improve a business's strategic and tactical advantage in the marketplace (Balasubramanian and Bashian, 1988). The world strategic and tactical advantage points to nothing but competition and thus supports the earlier claims that businesses ability to respond intelligently to issues they face can be the determining factor towards either their success or failure in modern day market.

On the other hand, Pressure-Response-support Model is a business intelligence model used to analyze business situations and find effective ways of reducing the problems face by the business and capitalizing on their opportunities to gain new stakes. The model comprises of three components: pressure, response and support.

• Understand business pressure – what are the problems faced by business
• Find effective ways to respond to these pressures – what are the solutions to there problems
• Computerize support – ensure that the solutions are as reliable as possible by adopting automation.

Figure (1): New York Stadium

Source as adapted from: Adventuresofagoodman.com (2012)

NEW YORK YANKEES BASEBALL CASE

According to the case, it was highlighted that the while baseball is a sports, clubs need revenues generated from ticket sales and television broadcast to pay baseball players. It also came to light that the salaries of these players are now on the high and in order to funnel a means of payment, the club also increased the price of tickets for live matches. 

Business pressure at Yankees – the problem faced by New York Yankees Baseball Club was the low number of fans attending the live matches. The number hit low because fans now prefer to watch these matches from home and other sources such as video games.

On the side of the fans, it is understandable as the economic situation those not provide much room for extravagant spending and paying for a cable television network with numerous other interesting programs is cheaper than going to one single baseball match. However, New York Yankees Baseball Club must provide solution to this problem or risk losing their important players to other richer baseball clubs. Thus, New York Yankee drafted a response to this situation. 

How Yankees responded to the pressure – in other to tackle the business pressure of increasing their revenue, New York Yankees Baseball Club replaced their original 1923 stadium in 2009 with a more visual enriching and technological advanced stadium.

The new stadium features video technologies from Cisco was considered the more wired, connected and video enabled stadium in all of baseball. The new stadium has more amenities and space with more intensive use of computer technology. The video visuals displayed through High Definition Flat screen Televisions are available throughout the stadium and in the welcome hall, Yankees museum, in-house restaurant and concession area.

The displays include live coverage of the matches, up-to-date sports story, archived and highlighted videos, and promotional message, news, weather, and traffic updates. These features ensure that fans are not just in touch with the live match but also with the overall society wherever they are around the Yankees stadium.

The luxury suite also offers fans touch screen phone for ordering foods instead of going downstairs to order the foods by themselves. At the business center, Yankees stadium features interactive video conferencing which is linked to Bronx library and other places in New York City such as hospitals. Players and executive can conduct a video conference of talk to fans before or after the games.

Such a response from New York Yankees Baseball Club was strategic and tactical as it enriched fans experience with these new technologies. Through this change, fans can see the live match and highlights no matter where they are in the stadium, thus it eliminated the associated inconvenience associated in with the old stadiums where fans far from the front seats have lesser visuals to the performance and fans couldn't undertake in the match experience at all when they are in areas such as washroom, in-house restaurants.

On the other hand, fans that were not able to attend never had the chance of talking with players and executives through video conference, neither did fans who attended the match have any idea of weather reports, news and traffic report while they were watching the match. Such experience offered valued for the money associated with purchasing tickets for live matches and gave absent fans good reasons to be present in next matches as they felt a sense of connection with the players having to talk to them and deliver the message directly to their home televisions and mobile devices.

Computerization of support – once the response has been undertaken, the next step in pressure-response-support model as the name implies is a support from computerization. Yankees Baseball Club supported their technologically advanced stadium by delivering data gather from the real life match and video conferencing directly to fan's home television or mobile devices such as phones and Ipad. Fans available for live matches can also order match concessions or view instant replays.

The baseball giant also have their own private website Yankees.com which features other computer based services such as ability for fans to watch live matches online, check live games scores, find out more about their favorite players and shop online for New York Yankees Baseball Club items such as caps, baseball and memorabilia. Some these features are illustrated below as adapted from New York Yankees Official Website (2012). 

Based on the analyses and evaluation above, it can be seen that New York Yankees Baseball club have been excellent in their handling of their business pressure of low ticket sales by responding with a more technological advanced and visually enriching stadium. Their solution was also supported by computerization of their system to offer fans more features. Through this means, the website has not just increased their ticket sales but also make more money from online shopping, online video download, online ticket sales and other features.

They have also increased their fan's loyalty due to their closeness with their fans in terms of video conferencing and forums where the fans fell as members of the Yankees family as they are offered opportunity to interact with both their favorite players and the management. Therefore, it can be concluded that proper business intelligence programs modeled around the Pressure-Response-Support Model huge potentials of turning business around positively.  

Figure (2) live match from New York Yankees Baseball Club's website

Figure (3): live score board on New York Yankees' Website

Figure (4) match calendar for future matches

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adventuredofagoodman.com, (2012) "New York Stadium in pictures". Available at: http://www.adventuresofagoodman.com/new-york-yankees-stadium-baseball-photography/ [Accessed on 24-03-2012].

Balasubramanian, V. and A. Bashian (1998) "Document Management and Web Technologies:  Alice Marries the Mad Hatter", Communications of the ACM, 41(7), pp. 107.

New York Yankees Official Website, (2012) "The official website of the New York Yankees Baseball Club". Available at:http://shop.mlb.com/category/index.jsp?categoryId=1452360[Accessed on: 24 – 03 – 2012].

Smith, M. (2002) "Business Process Intelligence – BI and Business Process Management Technologies are Converging to Create Value Beyond the Sum of their Parts", Intelligent Enterprise, Dec. 5, 2002, pp. 26. [LexisNexis Academic].

Soejarto, A. (Mar. 20, 2003) "Tough Times Call for Business Intelligence Services, an Indisputable Area of Growth", http://vb.channelsupersearch. com/news/var/40682.asp or  www.VarBusiness.com (current May 5, 2003).

Zantout, H. and F. Marir (1999) "Document Management Systems from  Current Capabilities  towards Intelligent Information Retrieval: An Overview.  International Journal of  Information Management, 19(6), pp. 471.