Case Study - Increasing nationwide participation by embracing a digital approach
We built a monitoring platform that helps England Netball track participation, performance, and growth nationwide.
- Client
- England Netball
- Services
- Web application development, Data visualisation, Digital transformation
Overview
England Netball are a top performing, financially sustainable National Governing Body that promotes Netball for Life and develops world class athletes.
The challenge
England Netball oversee programmes for participants of all ages and abilities across England. In 2015, the England Roses World Cup efforts inspired a huge uptake in the sport, and attendance at sessions increased across the country. Their manual system had reached its limit, and a user-friendly recording system was needed to accurately analyze participation figures and inform long-term growth strategy.
The turning point
We undertook a large discovery session with stakeholders to gain insight into how their programmes were structured and how their current systems operated. A vision of an intelligent web solution was built to manage the complexity of different programmes, solve the pain points of recording large amounts of data, and increase accuracy. This was the inception of England Netball’s Monitoring System.
What we did
- Ruby on Rails
- Participation tracking
- Data reporting
- API integration
Azuki have been an instrumental and trusted partner of England Netball’s for almost 10 years, going above and beyond to ensure the provision remains robust and continues to provide efficiencies and benefits to our ever-evolving operations.
An evolving solution
Using Ruby on Rails, we built an online system that allows programme managers to update attendance registers. This information instantly creates datasets that regional and HQ administrators can review and manage, and can be compared against national and regional growth targets generated in association with Sport England.
After the successful implementation, we expanded the platform to support additional programmes and new functionality. A key area was improving visibility into programme financial performance, providing instant and reliable data to guide commercial decisions. In 2019 we integrated with England Netball’s booking system via APIs, adding automation that increased efficiency and accuracy.
The result
England Netball continue to benefit from accurate monitoring data and are still delivering increases in participation nationwide. The bespoke system provides evidence of impact to secure ongoing funding that supports the sport’s positive impact on women and girls across the country.
Our relationship with Azuki has remained strong throughout the partnership; when we need changes, find bugs, or ask for advice they are always prompt to respond with easily digestible and proactive solutions.
