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Business English: Ideas with a high sporting impact
From judo to the pentathlon, Britain's sports associations are tapping corporate expertise in their quest for Olympic glory.It is a Sunday morning in May and dozens of men and women are converging on a conference room in British Airways' Waterside headquarters from nearby Heathrow airport. Some arrive in company shuttle buses and tuck into the buffet breakfast that is laid on before their meeting gets under way. A company photographer is on hand to capture salient moments.
It appears to be just another set of executives putting in extra hours for the benefit of their employer. Except these are not BA staff but representatives of the skiing and snowboarding fraternity. And this is not a BA function but the twice-yearly congress of SnowsportGB, the UK's governing body for winter sports.
The sports body is using BA's facilities thanks to a bond forged between the two organisations as part of an innovative scheme devised by the British Olympic Association.
Under pressure to help engineer a big improvement in the performance of British athletes by 2012, when London will host the summer Olympics, the association has come up with the FTSE-BOA Partnership Programme. This aims to help sports governing bodies accelerate their development, not by persuading companies to write large cheques, as under the traditional sponsorship model, but by tapping directly into what should be their core expertise: good management. The BOA believes such a scheme is unique in the world.
So far 11 sports, from boxing to the modern pentathlon, have been paired up with blue-chip companies (see below), with the intention of forging long-term bonds that could push Britain up the medals table.
"We are positioning 2012 as the catalyst, but saying that what we hope will evolve is long-term relationships between the parties," says Bev Salt, an executive with AstraZeneca, the pharmaceuticals group, who has been seconded to the BOA until next year to act as matchmaker between the two sides. A further set of pairings is expected to be unveiled this year.
BA's tie-up with SnowsportGB is initially focused on marketing and public relations. Athletes, for example, are brushing up their media-handling skills with the help of BA training courses. But it also has a more down-to-earth side. The airline's HQ happens to be conveniently located for the sort of gathering, such as the Sunday meeting, that requires people to congregate from widespread locations.
SnowsportGB has taken to holding its quarterly board meetings there as well. "It allows us to convey a degree of professionalism I am keen we should convey," says Oliver Jones, the body's chairman. Plus it makes it as easy as possible for different BA specialists to contribute to the body's deliberations.
Though the nature and scope of the partnerships vary widely, many share common characteristics. For the big companies, the appeal often boils down to employee motivation; for the sports bodies it lies in the ability to gain access to expertise that would normally be out of reach to organisations of their scale.
England Hockey is taking advantage of the energy group Centrica's IT know-how to install a new customer-relationship management system. "We have literally dozens of databases within the organisation . . . lots of pockets of data but not reading from the same source," says Philip Kimberley, a former Burmah Castrol executive who has been executive chairman of England Hockey since 2003. "At the end of [this], we will have replaced multitudinous sets of data with one state-of-the-art system managing our contacts."
Two executives from Land Securities, the property company, have joined the main board of British Volleyball as part of perhaps the widest-ranging partnership developed so far. Joint projects have included an event to showcase beach volleyball in the Land Securities-owned Birmingham Bullring centre. Similar events are expected in Portsmouth and East Kilbride.
The recently revived umbrella body for the sport is also benefiting from Land Securities' expertise in financial forecasting and risk analysis. Volleyball is not a sport in which Britain has traditionally excelled, so it faces heavy expenditure if standards are to rise sufficiently for the country to mount a credible Olympic challenge in 2012. Yet much government funding earmarked for the sport is performance-related.
"We have got them to focus on costs being covered by revenue and to look at cash flow and [other] sensitivities, such as what happens if they don't get their full funding in line with their plans," says David Godden, chief operating officer of Land Securities Trillium, the group's property partnerships business. "That has raised the obvious point: if they are going to be successful, they are going to need to get more money than they can get from the government. How are they going to do that? That takes you into marketing."
Richard Callicott, chairman of British Volleyball, says the opportunity to sit down with Duncan Lewis, Land Securities' group marketing director, and "listen to his common sense " has saved the body "an enormous amount of money". He believes the partnership is working well partly because "we get on well as people". This bond was initially forged at an off-site strategy meeting between the two sides in a Wokingham hotel.
The partnership between G4S, the security company, and the British Judo Association has included the provision of executive development and security services at judo events. One G4S executive is helping to assess which of a group of association executives might be earmarked for rapid development.
"A sporting body doesn't generally have the luxury of that level of consulting," says Scott McCarthy, the association's chief executive. He is also hoping G4S might help set up a commercial spin-off for the association in providing self-defence training for corporate clients. All profits would be reinvested in the sport. Mr McCarthy sees the idea as "a tremendous commercial opportunity".
Another useful attribute of many big multinationals is a presence on the ground in Beijing, host of the 2008 Olympics. Corus, the steel company that is British Triathlon's partner, provided support services ranging from translation to logistics during visits to China by the British team.
On the corporate side, BA sees winter sports as a way to fill more seats in a period of relatively low demand. G4S, meanwhile, views its association with judo as a possible means of reducing its staff turnover rate. "It is hard to differentiate yourself from another employer," says Debbie McGrath, communications director. "We have a huge workforce of around half a million people across 115 countries. One of the things we need to do is try to engage [them] in the brand and feel proud of it."
Of course, the relationships may not be problem-free. The corporate world is volatile and dynamic. Priorities change. Already one company, Corus, has been taken over by India's Tata Steel, although there seems no reason to think that the change will affect the partnership with triathlon.
Ms Salt anticipates an attrition rate of between 10 and 20 per cent a year, though she is confident of BOA finding replacements when necessary. Ultimately, the test will be the Olympic medals table, but early signs, from Waterside and elsewhere, are encouraging.
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FTD.de, 30.11.2007
© 2007 Financial Times Deutschland,
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