(L) Matthew Jafarian & (R) Edson Crevecoeur of the Miami Heat.
The Miami Heat are no strangers to success on the court having won the NBA Championship 3 times. In this session you will learn how they have parlayed that on court success to the cloud. Find out how they have leveraged their data and Azure to increase efficiency, reduce costs and increase profits.
“After we implemented the Azure data warehouse and Dynamics 365, we had a 30% year-over-year increase in our season ticket sales, with essentially the same team on the floor,” Mattew Jafarian adds.
While customer data is vital for the HEAT, it was fragmented in the past. “We had a wide variety of systems across the organization, but we had no good way to bring the data together and answer questions about the business,” says Edson Crevecoeur, Vice President of Strategy and Data Analytics for the Miami HEAT. “We sent spreadsheets around via email as our primary source of information and communication. It took hours to produce those spreadsheets, and they became obsolete as soon as the numbers changed.”
The HEAT chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Azure data services to gain a comprehensive, holistic view of its data. “With Azure, you can easily access pre-configured data services in minutes and quickly design and publish new services,” says Crevecoeur. “Microsoft has the best end-to-end cloud solution, including data integration, transformation, security, AI and end-user visualization and analysis with tools like Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power BI and it costs probably one-fifth of what it would cost to do everything in-house.”
Those insights are part of the Heat’s drive to become the NBA’s digital leader. It begins with real-time data that’s generated by fans and their mobile devices while in the arena – or while buying tickets or merchandise away from games. The data gets collected and enriched by Microsoft Azure.