Transforming Women’s Tennis with Innovative Technology Webcast Summary – Changing the Game

I watched this webcast yesterday with Jenni Lewis who is an SAP Solution Architect with Global Sponsorship. She said she has the “best job in the world” as she is loves tennis and loves to travel.

What I especially enjoyed was that Jenni showed the business scenarios and then the technology behind it.  I haven’t watched tennis myself in years but I was impressed with the great story and business problems resolved.

Business Challenges

Amounts of data created being driven by growth of middle class, with more access to data, technology, data is doubling every 18 months, with the velocity of data – frequency of changes

Jenni explained that in non-grand slam tennis tournaments that coaches can walk on the court with their match statistics, deliver statistics courtside so can have conversation with player

SAP has tennis “Ambassadors” such as Andy Roddick help tells the stories and do appearances.  SAP has sponsored two tournaments  – one was the SAP Open which ended as it moved to Brasil. SAP is the main technology sponsor for Sony Open in Miami in March.  SAP built the tournament app.

Last month SAP announced partnership with WTA, Women’s Tennis Association.  WTA is a small business, but also is global entity, 54 tournaments in 32 countries.  WTA reaches all staff and tournaments in a timely fashion, with a small IT department.  They use a cloud solution – database and BI view

Figure 1: Source: SAP

Figure 1 shows the target audience of the tennis applications.  Most of the webcast focused on applications for the players and coaches.

Figure 2: Source: SAP

Figure 2 shows WTA is using SAP to deliver analytics to players and coaches

They signed an agreement to have access to 54 tournaments a year so they can look at season performance.

Figure 3: Source: SAP

Figure 3 shows two high level views to provide to coaches post-match

Left of Figure 3 shows player analytics and the court position

Figure 4: Source: SAP

Serena stands in the middle of the court

Opponents can look at this and look at the value

Serena is aggressive and doesn’t care who serves her,  will serves

Coaches can slice and dice

Figure 5: Source: SAP

Figure 5 shows the analysis of Serena’s serve and when she was serving those aces; you can drill and see

Patterns of play will let you see what is going on

Is there a trend across multiple matches?  Mornings and evenings?  This is information for her coach.

Figure 6: Source: SAP

Figure 6 shows Maria Sharapova and Serena’s speed shots and whether they won the point.

This is a Web Intelligence report behind the scenes.

Figure 7: Source: SAP

Figure 7 shows the technology used, including the SAP Mobile BI app.  The Mobile BI SDK  was used to customize the look.

The out of the box solution and re-skinned using SDK

This application is used by the players, coaches, media

Figure 8: Source: SAP

Figure 8 shows a web service feeds the data

From umpire – built an app to interpret that

Jenni said they use Data Services from Hawkeye for data cleansing, manipulation, both are fed into HANA in the Cloud

They have real time and process information

Figure 9: Source: SAP

Figure 9 shows Dashboards – mobile devices & tablets, web

The consumers were players/coaches- standard SAP mobile technology – real-time – coach converse with player based on stats – players will get emotional and the “eye will lie”

The WTA staff uses BusinessObjects Explorer and look up obscure things asked – number of nationalities are playing; not everyone travels with PC – access with mobile

The media uses it to tell story, use images, and look up what is going on

They used SAP standard software

Figure 10: Source: SAP

Figure 10 shows the fans Sony mobile application, so fans can have their say, and see what everyone else is saying

Figure 11: Source: SAP

Figure 11 shows a 3-D replay area, showing point by point what happens

It also offers a virtual replay – coaches; analyze “what Serena was doing” without watching 3 hours of footage

Figure 12: Source: SAP

Figure 12 shows they can look at serving patterns, shooting patterns

Red balls are the aces she served

Jenni said they are moving from sense and respond to predict and act

Related Links:

Karsten RUF  asks: “Between now and October 25th, take 15 minutes to complete the Dresner Mobile BI survey.“

Mobile BI Sessions at SAP TechEd Las Vegas are here