Willem II: One Account. One Club.

Willem II already ran its CRM on Arenametrix, implemented by Bluepitch. So when the club needed a proper single sign on for fans, the question was whether to bring in another supplier or to take what Arenametrix already had and develop it further. Willem II asked Bluepitch to own the implementation and everything the fan touches. Together with the Arenametrix team the product went to a level neither side had on the shelf, and it went live in the week before the first home match of the Eredivisie season. Seven days to move eleven thousand season ticket holders onto a new account.

  • Client

    Willem II

  • Services

    Engagement, Staffing, Technology

  • Links

    Visit Website

The Challenge:

  • A separate account for the website, the webshop, the ticket shop and fan service.
  • Over 100,000 fan records held in systems that did not recognise each other.
  • No single view of what one supporter was worth across all of those channels.
  • Arenametrix had a login, but not at the level a club of this size needed, and nothing off the shelf closed the gap either.
  • A date that could not move. 11,000 season ticket holders had to activate a new account in the week before the first home match of the Eredivisie season, or they would be standing at a turnstile that did not let them in.

 

The Idea:

The obvious route was a separate supplier for identity. That would have left Willem II with another contract, another integration and another party in the room. Bluepitch had already implemented the club’s Arenametrix CRM, so the fan data was there. The better route was to take the login Arenametrix already had and develop it together into something built for a football club.

Willem II asked Bluepitch to own the implementation and the whole fan-facing side. What a supporter sees, in what order, and how few steps it takes to reach a ticket, an order or an answer. Bluepitch and the Arenametrix team built it out from there. Willem II ended up with fewer suppliers rather than more, and Arenametrix ended up with a stronger product.

The Solution:

  • Owned the implementation end to end, from requirements through to go-live.
  • Designed mijn.willem-ii.nl: the flows, the screens and the route a fan takes through them, made specific to the club instead of generic.
  • Developed the existing Arenametrix login into a full single sign on, together with their team, rather than adding a separate identity supplier.
  • Built on the Arenametrix CRM Bluepitch had already implemented at the club.
  • Connected five systems behind one login: the website, the webshop, the ticket shop, the Zendesk service environment and Tricolores+.
  • Migrated over 100,000 existing accounts and ran the reactivation of 11,000 season ticket holders inside one week.
  • Held the public announcement until the product worked, rather than hotfixing in front of fans with ticket sales about to open.

The Results:

  • 11,000 season tickets scanned at the first home match. No incidents at the turnstiles.
  • 10,000 verified accounts in the first week, 25,000 in the first month.
  • 85 support tickets in total, out of 11,000 supporters who had to reactivate inside a week.
  • Over 100,000 accounts migrated.
  • One fan record behind the website, the shop, the ticket shop, fan service and Tricolores+.
  • One supplier fewer rather than one more. Identity sits with the party that already holds the club’s CRM.
  • Willem II is the first club in the Netherlands live on Arenametrix Single Sign On.

Delivered from inside the club. Bluepitch was seconded into Willem II as revenue lead, working in the club’s own systems and day-to-day for the length of the project. The same person who carries the revenue target also ran this project.

Related work. The same login now sits behind Willem II’s central fan service and their commerce platform. We solved the same identity problem for Royal Antwerp FC.

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