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52 Part One Organizations, Management, and the Networked Enterprise
All professional sports teams today collect detailed
data on player and team performance, fan behavior,
and sales, and increasingly use these data to drive decisions about every aspect of the business—marketing,
ticketing, player evaluation, and TV and digital media
deals. This includes the National Football League
(NFL), which is increasingly turning to data to improve
how its players and teams perform and how fans experience the game.
Since 2014 the NFL has been capturing player
movement data on the field by putting nickel-sized
radio frequency identification (RFID) tags beneath
players’ shoulder pads to track every move they
make. The information the sensors gather is used
by NFL teams to improve their training and strategy, by commentators on live game broadcasts, and
by fans attending games or using the NFL app on
the Xbox One.
The NFL’s player tracking system is based on
the Zebra Sports Solution developed by Zebra
Technologies, a Chicago-based firm specializing in
tracking technology that includes the bar codes on
groceries and other consumer goods and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The Zebra
Sports Solution system records players’ speed, direction, location on the field, how far they ran on a play,
and how long they were sprinting, jogging, or walking. The system can also determine what formation
a team was in and how players’ speed or acceleration
affects their on-field performance. Want to know how
hard Eli Manning is throwing passes or the force with
which a ball arrives in the hands of receiver Odell
Beckham? The system knows how to do all that.
NFL players have RFID chips in their left and
right shoulder pads that transmit data to 20 radio
receivers strategically located in the lower and
upper levels of stadiums to collect data about how
each player moves, using metrics such as velocity,
speed in miles per hour, and distance traveled. From
there the data are transmitted to an on-site server
computer, where Zebra’s software matches an RFID
tag to the correct player or official. The football also
has a sensor transmitting location data. The data are
generated in real-time as the game is being played.
Each sensor transmits its location about 25 times
per player.
It takes just two seconds for data to be received
by the motion sensors, analyzed, and pushed out
to remote cloud computers run by Amazon Web
Services for the NFL. From the NFL cloud computers, the data are shared with fans, broadcasters,
and NFL teams. The data captured by the NFL are
displayed to fans using the NFL Next Gen Stats website, NFL social media channels, and the NFL app
on Windows 10 and the Xbox One. The data are also
transmitted to the giant display screens in the arena
to show fans during the game.
The data have multiple uses. NFL teams use them
to evaluate player and team performance and to
analyze tactics, such as whether it might be better to
press forward or to punt in a particular fourth-down
situation. Data transmitted to broadcasters, to stadium screens, to Next Gen Stats, and to the Next Gen
Stats feature of Microsoft’s Xbox One NFL app help
create a deeper fan experience that gets fans more
involved in the game.
Some of the statistics fans can now see on Next
Gen Stats include Fastest Ball Carriers, Longest
Tackles, Longest Plays, Passing Leaders, Rushing
Leaders, and Receiving Leaders. Next Gen Stats also
features charts for individual players and videos
that explain the differences and similarities between players, teams, and games based on the data.
While the data may be entertaining for fans, they
could prove strategic for the teams. Data markers for
each play are recorded, including type of offense,
type of defense, whether there was a huddle, all
movement during the play, and the yard line where
the ball was stopped. The NFL runs custom-created
analytics to deliver visualizations of the data to each
team within 24 hours of the game, via a custom-built
web portal. The system displays charts and graphs as
well as tabular data to let teams have more insight.
Each NFL team may also hire its own data analyst
to wring even more value from the data. The data
are giving NFL fans, teams, coaches, and players a
deeper look into the game they love.
Sources: Jason Hiner, “How the NFL and Amazon Unleashed ‘Next
Gen Stats’ to Grok Football Games,” TechRepublic, February 2, 2018;
Teena Maddox, “Super Bowl 52: How the NFL and US Bank Stadium
Are Ready to Make Digital History,” TechRepublic, February 1, 2018;
Brian McDonough, “How the NFL’s Data Operation Tracks Every
Move on the Field,” Information Management, December 7, 2016;
www.zebra.com, accessed March 15, 2017; and Mark J. Burns,
“Zebra Technologies, NFL Revamp Partnership For Third Season,”
SportTechie, September 6, 2016.
INTERACTIVE SESSION ORGANIZATIONS
Data Changes How NFL Teams Play the Game and How Fans See It
Chapter 2 Global E-business and Collaboration 53

  1. How do the data about teams and players captured by the NFL help NFL football teams and the
    NFL itself make better decisions? Give examples
    of two decisions that were improved by the systems described in this case.
  2. How did using data help the NFL and its teams
    improve the way they run their business?
    CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
  3. What kinds of systems are illustrated in this case
    study? Where do they obtain their data? What
    do they do with the data? Describe some of the
    inputs and outputs of these systems.
  4. What business functions do these systems support?
    Explain your answer.
    Sales and
    Marketing
    FUNCTIONAL
    AREAS
    Manufacturing
    and Production
    Finance and
    Accounting
    Human
    Resources
    Knowledge
    Management
    Systems
    Processes
    Processes
    Enterprise
    Systems
    Customers,
    Distributors
    Suppliers,
    Business Partners
    Processes
    Supply
    Chain
    Management
    Systems
    Customer
    Relationship
    Management
    Systems
    FIGURE 2.6 ENTERPRISE APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE
    Enterprise applications automate processes that span multiple business functions and
    organizational levels and may extend outside the organization.
    performance of the organization as a whole. Figure 2.6 shows that the architecture for these enterprise applications encompasses processes spanning the
    entire organization and, in some cases, extending beyond the organization to
    customers, suppliers, and other key business partners.
    Enterprise Systems Firms use enterprise systems, also known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, to integrate business processes in manufacturing and production, finance and accounting, sales and marketing, and
    human resources into a single software system. Information that was previously

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One of the main reasons of the collapse of the Roman Empire was the over expenditure on the military to constantly fund wars abroad. In order for the Romans to invade and conquer other provinces they had to spend heavily on their legions. The Roman armies and supply lines became over-stretched resulting in thousands of soldiers being recruited and deployed from Rome into other territories as invaders or defenders. They also depended on soldiers to defend the borders of the lands they had conquered from barbarian attacks which resulted in the increased manufacturing of weapons and more money being spent on soldiers. High military spending left the Romans with very limited resources for other essential government projects such as the building of more public houses and the development of roads and aqueducts as well as leading to inflation. The over-expenditure on the military led the citizens of Rome to refuse the policies and laws enforced by the government and riots were commonplace in Rome during its last century. Due to the Roman citizens growing distrust of the Empire less people volunteered to join their armies which forced the military to hire common criminals and non-Roman mercenaries. The government raised taxes to aid their military expenditure which added to the low morale of the Roman population with every citizen losing a third of their weekly wage. The money raised to spend taxes was wasted on soldiers who constantly had to be replaced until the Romans could no longer afford to send large garrisons of troops abroad leaving their own borders poorly defended and vulnerable to attacks. The non-Roman mercenaries were too proud to serve a weakening empire and they began to conquer parts of the Empire as the Romans were unable to afford to send detachments and reserves to reclaim these areas. The city of Rome was left very poorly defended due to the deployment of troops to other provinces within the Empire which were defeated and taken by the barbarians making it considerably easier for them to conquer Rome. In order to ensure their loyalty, the wages of the soldiers were doubled and they were often promised discharge payments such as land or money. The military also spent loads of money on the transport of food and grai>

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One of the main reasons of the collapse of the Roman Empire was the over expenditure on the military to constantly fund wars abroad. In order for the Romans to invade and conquer other provinces they had to spend heavily on their legions. The Roman armies and supply lines became over-stretched resulting in thousands of soldiers being recruited and deployed from Rome into other territories as invaders or defenders. They also depended on soldiers to defend the borders of the lands they had conquered from barbarian attacks which resulted in the increased manufacturing of weapons and more money being spent on soldiers. High military spending left the Romans with very limited resources for other essential government projects such as the building of more public houses and the development of roads and aqueducts as well as leading to inflation. The over-expenditure on the military led the citizens of Rome to refuse the policies and laws enforced by the government and riots were commonplace in Rome during its last century. Due to the Roman citizens growing distrust of the Empire less people volunteered to join their armies which forced the military to hire common criminals and non-Roman mercenaries. The government raised taxes to aid their military expenditure which added to the low morale of the Roman population with every citizen losing a third of their weekly wage. The money raised to spend taxes was wasted on soldiers who constantly had to be replaced until the Romans could no longer afford to send large garrisons of troops abroad leaving their own borders poorly defended and vulnerable to attacks. The non-Roman mercenaries were too proud to serve a weakening empire and they began to conquer parts of the Empire as the Romans were unable to afford to send detachments and reserves to reclaim these areas. The city of Rome was left very poorly defended due to the deployment of troops to other provinces within the Empire which were defeated and taken by the barbarians making it considerably easier for them to conquer Rome. In order to ensure their loyalty, the wages of the soldiers were doubled and they were often promised discharge payments such as land or money. The military also spent loads of money on the transport of food and grai>

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