Member Article

The Premier League is missing a trick leaving VAR on the bench; is your business doing the same?

As the multi-million pound jamboree that is the Premier League gets underway, it’s odds on that it won’t be very long before the assertion that football is a game of ‘fine margins’ is made. But when we talk about fine margins in elite sport, what we’re really talking about is speed of decision making; the failure to substitute a tiring player may mean that he doesn’t react fast enough to stop the opposition scoring. Or a player’s decision to pass left when he had not realised his teammate was racing free to his right. It’s all about making the right decision, based on all the available information, in a split second. However, while these decisions are crucial, nowhere is this process more frustrating for managers, players and supporters, than the referee’s decision to unfairly award a penalty when the alleged target dived!

Oh, but wait, since the advent of VAR, such incorrect decisions are actually being eliminated from the game. Why? Because, even though it is in its infancy, VAR effectively allows the ‘back stage’ referee team to review on-field decisions quickly, pretty much in real time, to then enable the on-pitch referee to make the right call. As we saw in the recent FIFA World Cup, VAR provided the referee with much more evidence upon which to make the correct decision. So, fine margins in terms of incorrect refereeing calls are starting to be eradicated. The result? Better accuracy of decision making for referees through the application of technology. But the reality is that if VAR was not able to provide the referee with an almost instantaneous review then it would not be a feasible technology. After all, the game can’t be stopped for longer than a few seconds.

There’s a lesson here for the application of any data that informs decisions in business; the quicker you can gain sight into data that allows you to make fast, accurate decisions, the more value you will create. After all, on the pitch of today’s fast moving, dynamic commercial environment, there is no replay to take advantage of missed opportunity.

Automation software is helping many businesses gather data intelligently from a wide range of data sources – some in real-time – to speed up the time it takes to drive value from it dramatically. Beyond improving time to insight for business leaders, automating the process of data gathering also helps IT teams more quickly integrate new and emerging sources of data – such as Internet of Things (IoT) or social media data – with less steep learning curves. By removing the complexity of new data integration projects, IT teams can work faster to bolster the context of data that business leaders will act on.

Strangely, as it kicks off this month, VAR is yet to be introduced in the Premier League. Distrust of the technology clearly still persists from some associations. Yet, until VAR is accepted, we’ll continue to see referees make the occasional wrong call because they simply don’t have access to the evidence that could help them make the right decision.

Given the prevalence of, and value driven by, data analytics today, it is worth investigating innovative data analytics solutions – such as automation – to make a timely business call. Automation can help modern business professionals base their most critical commercial decisions on the broadest range of data points possible, which serves the interest of employees, employers and stakeholders alike. And if successful in achieving the ‘fine margins’ that allow companies to be successful in their market places, the trophy will be theirs. Now let’s hope there will also be a trophy for my team at the end of the Premier League!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by WhereScape .