The San Jose Sharks Data Dashboard is a comprehensive tool designed to streamline insights and support decision-making for the team. Leveraging advanced UX principles and data visualization techniques, the dashboard offers:
Real-Time Metrics: Displays live game stats, player performance analytics, and key team trends.
Historical Data Analysis: Features comparative insights into past seasons, enabling strategic planning and progress tracking.
Customizable Views: Allows users to personalize their dashboard, focusing on metrics like player stats, power-play efficiency, or attendance trends.
User-Friendly Interface: Built with an intuitive design, ensuring seamless navigation for both casual users and analytics professionals.
This dashboard not only empowers the San Jose Sharks' internal teams but also enriches fan engagement with accessible, data-driven narratives about the team’s performance.
Tags: Consulting | Dashboard | Tablet
Project Time: Sep 2022 - Jan 2023
My Responsibility: Research & Design
Results: Delivered for implementation
As the parent company of the San Jose Sharks NHL team, the San Jose Barracuda AHL team, and operator of SAP Center, TechCU Arena, and multiple recreational ice rinks, Sharks Sports & Entertainment (SSE) manages many businesses in one. Together with SAP, SSE leverages cloud solutions to integrate and correlate data for a 360-degree view of its business, helping to optimize front-office operations and enhance fan experiences.
third-party data sources integrated with SAP Datasphere to centralize vendor-managed data.
reduction in turnaround time for venue operational reporting.
decrease in full-time employee onboarding processing time.
"Deploying intelligent technologies using SAP BTP was fast, and our team can manage them intuitively. We now have one source of truth and deep insight that allow us to better connect with fans."
Neda Tabatabaie
SVP of Business Analytics and Technology at SSE
The Challenge
The world of professional sports is more than just fun and games. It encompasses everything from parking to in-house food and beverage, ticket sales, retail, venue maintenance, staffing, and more.
To stay competitive and meet the growing demands of fans, SSE set out to gain a comprehensive view of its organization. With multiple third-party systems across departments, SSE’s siloed data made it difficult to generate reports or track metrics in real time and hindered informed decision-making.
SSE needed a centralized system across the business to gain valuable insights into fan preferences, identify areas for improvement across employee processes, and drive better results.
The Solution
Realizing the need to future-proof its business with a cloud-based IT infrastructure, SSE implemented the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) as the foundation of its digital transformation. SAP Datasphere integrates and correlates SSE’s data from different vendors and systems across ticketing, parking, food and beverage operations, e-commerce retail, and employee management.
With one source of truth and deep insights, SSE can connect better with fans while optimizing event management and profitability.
Fostering a loyal and engaged fan base
SSE strives to create platforms that bring people together, from hockey games and concerts to local events, ice sports, and community projects. To provide a unified fan experience across these varied touchpoints, SSE needed to integrate its digital and in-person interactions, delivering personalized engagements on a larger scale.
Using SAP Customer Data Platform, SSE gains a 360-degree view of each customer, consolidating activity information such as ticketing, attendance, and account data as SAP Customer Data Cloud manages customer consent and profile details. SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement handles real-time, personalized e-mail campaigns through advanced segmentation, ensuring fans receive content relevant to their interests. These insights are then integrated into SAP Sales Cloud, improving pipeline and activity management capabilities for account managers. This approach helps boost proactive retention efforts and loyalty.
Looking ahead, SSE remains committed to advancing its customer relationship strategy by integrating additional data sources, enriching the customer profile with new dimensions, and leveraging embedded artificial intelligence (AI) such as the SAP CX AI Toolkit to not just meet expectations—but exceed them.
Building a winning culture beyond the ice
For a sports team like the San Jose Sharks, success and fan experiences depend on both the team’s performance and the efficiency and effectiveness of its behind-the-scenes operations—driving #TealTogether from the inside out. SSE sought to integrate its HR data with its existing SAP BTP infrastructure and selected SAP SuccessFactors to support its HR vision and make more informed human capital decisions.
SSE uses SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central to maintain a single record of all employee data to automate processes and reduce daily tasks. SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll helps further streamline operations by refining salary structures, providing a one-stop shop for benefits, and ensuring compliance with complex labor laws and tax regulations specific to professional sports organizations.
SSE also recognizes the importance of diversity, inclusion, and belonging to its growth. With the help of SAP SuccessFactors Performance and Goals, SSE can focus on continually adapting and reimagining its workforce with a flexible and agile solution for performance management and upskilling opportunities tailored to full-time employees, event day staffers, or union populations.
"We are committed to delivering exceptional experiences, and employees are at the heart of that mission. With effective strategy and operations, we are establishing Sharks Sports & Entertainment as an employer of choice."
Cassie McBride, SVP and General Counsel at SSE
The Result
With SAP, SSE drives business innovation and achieves its goals on and off the ice by enabling employees to self-serve and make informed, strategic decisions with confidence.
SAP Analytics Cloud provides SSE employees with a unified access point for data insights. User-friendly dashboards allow SSE to visualize, analyze, and identify patterns in its consolidated data sets. With these tools, SSE has reduced redundancy, improved data governance, and eliminated various manual processes for seamless collaboration across the organization.
For marketing and sales, the correlation between front and back-end customer data helps SSE better understand the habits and tenure of season ticket holders. In 2024, these efforts led to the quick deployment of a personalized San Jose Sharks renewal campaign that achieved a 75% open rate, 28% click rate, and surpassed industry standards with an impressive 87% renewal rate.
For venue operators, real-time monitoring of entry points at SAP Center makes it possible to adjust staffing based on attendance and parking data if entry traffic exceeds the expected baseline by more than 10% before and after the event.
For HR, workforce reports also help SSE analyze the evolution of its people and culture and take action, leading to internal candidates filling one-third of open full-time roles in the ’22-23 NHL season and a 13% increase in workforce diversity and inclusivity metrics over the last 16 months.
"SAP's long-term partnership based on a shared vision supports us in co-innovating around our business processes, both fan-facing and back office. The spirit of collaboration allows us to skate where the puck is going, rather than being constantly focused on existing operations"
Jonathan Becher
President at SSE
Key business outcomes and benefits:
• Increased visibility and data access across the organization by unifying sales, marketing, and operations, on one platform
• Established a single source of truth for employee data to enable quick reporting of HR-related stats that inform strategy and decisions for the first time in the organization’s history
• Derived real-time insights to improve marketing and the fan experience
Featured solutions and services:
SAP Business Technology Platform provides a unified, business-centric platform that connects processes, data, and experiences to support business innovation and success
SAP Datasphere consolidates and harmonizes data from key sources across the business while ensuring data quality
SAP Analytics Cloud combines business intelligence, augmented analytics, predictive analytics, and enterprise planning into one cloud environment
SAP SuccessFactors offers individualized experiences and strategic workforce planning capabilities that empower employees to reach their full potential
SAP Customer Data Platform for company-wide customer data management helps improve engagement, conversion, and retention.
SAP Customer Data Cloud enables robust and secure customer identity, consent, and authentication management
SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement empowers marketers to reach customers where they are by delivering real-time, personalized, and omnichannel experiences at scale
SAP Sales Cloud provides a 360-degree view of every customer and interaction to drive revenue and build lasting relationships
About Sharks Sports & Entertainment
Sharks Sports & Entertainment (SSE) is the parent company of the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League, the San Jose Barracuda of the American Hockey League, and oversees all areas of operation of the city-owned SAP Center at San Jose, the premier sports and entertainment venue in Santa Clara County. Established in 2000, SSE manages three public Ice facilities throughout the Bay Area: Sharks Ice at San Jose—which includes the state-of-the-art Tech CU Arena, Sharks Ice at Fremont, and the Oakland Ice Center. Headquartered in San Jose, California, SSE remains steadfast in its pursuit of pioneering the future of sports and entertainment while connecting diverse groups of people for the good of the organization and the community. We are all #TealTogether.
Industry
Region
Company Size
Sports and entertainment
North America
280 full-time and 1,100 part-time employees
My UX design portfolio showcasing a diverse range of projects where I deliver research-driven, user-centric solutions.
Highlights include:
• Enterprise SaaS: Transforming SAP Data Custodian with modern UI designs and seamless adoption of the latest design system, resulting in improved usability and product scalability.
• Healthcare Innovation: Designing Dexcom's first desktop app, enabling diabetes patients to access glucose data conveniently and distraction-free while working.
• Data Visualization & Research: From dashboards for the San Jose Sharks to global design thinking workshops, see how I craft impactful designs and streamline complex workflows.
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How did I expand Dexcom's software offerings and improve health management for their users?
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How did I define SAP Eureka's and SuccessFactors' digital design principles
and deliver user-centric designs?
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