Founded in 1960, the Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team headquartered in Irving, Texas. The team has a large national following, which is perhaps best represented by their NFL record for number of consecutive games at sold-out stadiums. 

Challenge

Bill Priakos, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Dallas Cowboys Merchandising Division, and his team needed more visibility into their data so they could run it more profitably. Microsoft was selected as the baseline platform for this upgrade as well as a number of other sales, logistics, and e-commerce (per MW) applications. The Cowboys expected that this new information architecture would provide the needed analytics and reporting. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and the search began for a robust dashboarding, analytics, and reporting tool to fill this gap.

Solution and Results

Tableau and Teknion together provided real-time reporting and dashboard capabilities that exceeded the Cowboys' requirements. Systematically and methodically the Teknion team worked side by side with data owners and data users within the Dallas Cowboys to deliver all required functionality, on time and under budget. "Early in the process, we were able to get a clear understanding of what it would take to run a more profitable operation for the Cowboys," said Teknion Vice President Bill Luisi. "This process step is a key step in Teknion's approach with any client, and it always pays huge dividends as the implementation plan progresses." Added Luisi, "Of course, Tableau worked very closely with us and the Cowboys during the entire project. Together, we made sure that the Cowboys could achieve their reporting and analytical goals in record time." Now, for the first time, the Dallas Cowboys are able to monitor their complete merchandising activities from manufacture to end customer and not only see what is happening across the life cycle, but also drill down even further into why it is happening. Today, this BI solution is used to report and analyze the business activities of the Merchandising Division, which is responsible for all of the Dallas Cowboys' brand sales. Industry estimates say that the Cowboys generate 20% of all NFL merchandise sales, which reflects the fact that they are the most recognized sports franchise in the world. According to Eric Lai, a ComputerWorld reporter, Tony Romo and the rest of the Dallas Cowboys may have been only average on the football field in the last few years, but off the field, especially in the merchandising arena, they remain America's team.

Questions:

1. How did the Dallas Cowboys use information visualization?

2. What were the challenge, the proposed solution, and the obtained results?