This year's Super Bowl is being played at the San Francisco 49ers' stadium in Santa Clara, in Silicon Valley's backyard. I, the CEO of SOASTA, a Silicon Valley software start-up, wanted to share my random musings about high performance, on the field and online.
At this time of the year our thoughts and minds turn to things like resolutions, planning for the new year, post-holiday diets and the football playoffs. Mine do, anyway, because as a former MLB ball player, I am an avid sports fan, intrigued by the concepts of athletic challenge and achievement. I am also the CEO of a performance analytics company in Silicon Valley.
On the surface this might seem like an unusual combination, but I see many similarities between athletics and maximizing digital performance. Football, baseball, e-commerce and media companies are all driven by statistics, using data to rate skills and drive competitive advantage. Allow me to elaborate.
We all want to win
Even more interested in the Super Bowl game than the fans are companies whose businesses rely on their web sites and mobile apps and their ability to deliver superlative customer experiences. An event like the Super Bowl can cause online activity to spike, for businesses ranging from online shopping and pizza delivery to the sites of fans, teams and advertisers. Modern digital performance management enables digital businesses to take advantage of "spiky" events such as the Super Bowl to identify problems in real time via real user monitoring; to quickly identify problems to mitigate business risks; to test and verify fixes in production; and win customers (and increase revenue) by delivering a high-performance customer experience.
It's the era of Big Data in sports, too
As I mentioned previously, I used to play professional baseball -- I was drafted by the Minnesota Twins, though I later decided that my future was in the tech world. At any rate, I doubt that I'd play at all today, because data has changed how the game is played and how teams recruit players. Certainly baseball has always been defined by stats, and now it is being changed by performance measurement and data. In addition to batting averages and the speed of pitches, the MLB measures how fast players run, their reaction times and even if they moved in the right direction. Baseball fans can view player data online and see stats in real time that augment instant replays and facilitate player comparisons. The goal is to create savvier, more engaged fans and deliver the information they want. It makes what is typically a slow, traditional game more interesting.
What online businesses can learn from sports
Data has changed the game of baseball, and it illustrates the changes occurring in all types of businesses. Like MLB teams, digital enterprises are improving their "game" with valuable analytics and the insights they provide. As brick-and-mortar retailers are going direct to customers online, for example, success is based on metrics. Management today needs to know how well their web sites perform, where there is a need for improvement and how and where they can make a change that will impact the bottom line -- fast. Site load times are a lot like a 95-mph pitch -- the best pitchers and web sites are fast. Fans and consumers demand it.
Measuring everything -- from football inflation levels to online experiences
The Super Bowl will determine the champion football team AND the winning online businesses. On Super Bowl Sunday, they will be the ones closely tracking site performance and making changes in real time. In today's performance-driven business environment, enterprises need to focus on maximizing performance to continue scoring touchdowns.