Why the Ravens Turned to a Software Solution to Deliver a Streamlined Partnership Experience

Baltimore Ravens vs the Miami Dolphins on Thursday night football. (Photo via the Ravens)

*Trak is a proud partner of Front Office Sports

“Which spreadsheet was that on? When is that deliverable due? How big was that ad?” Before Trak, this is probably what you would have heard if you had spent any time inside the Ravens Corporate Sales department.

Like many others in the industry, copious amounts of Google Docs and Excel spreadsheets were passed around the office like a bad flu in order to make sure everyone was on the same page.

For Kate Kasabula, Director of Client Services for the Baltimore Ravens, this process was both a time waster and a productivity inhibitor.

“We were first introduced to the product about two years ago and prior to that, for each of our sponsorship accounts, we had done an excel document for each of our partners outlining what their assets were, when the deliverables were, and any notes or details,” said Kasabula. “We found that it was helpful, but that it wasn’t very interactive. There was no way to keep it up to date. We looked at Google Docs and things like that, but none of those worked for us.”

With no clear solution in sight, Kasabula noted that being introduced to Trak was, “like a little efficiency angel came down. For us, it was like ‘YES! Thank You!’”

“Trak saves time that we used to spend on tracking media attachments down, editing & updating complex/disconnected spreadsheets, or sitting in endless status meetings” – Kate Kasabula

The biggest perk of Trak for Kasabula is the fact that everything that a member of the partnership team or that the client may need can all be found in one place and with just a few clicks.

“It has allowed both parties, the sponsor, and team, to interact in the program, have one central source for uploading deliverables, communicating in terms of when tickets were mailed out, and archive the current accounts into future years so if a partner wants a print ad from previous seasons, we can easily find it and pull it up,” noted Kasabula.

Beyond just the partnerships team being able to access the solution, the Ravens are able to use it for their other internal teams who may need to go in and grab the deliverables to fulfill obligations in their respective business units.

“We have gotten so many questions over the years of, ‘What else is due?’, ‘When is it due?’, ‘Where do I find deliverables?’, ‘What size is the print ad?’, and having all of the specs listed in one place and in something that takes one click to find everything makes the process much smoother.”

From the beginning, Kasabula and her team made sure that if they wanted to limit any headaches, they would have to go all in with the software and roll it out for all of their partners and not just a few.

“Trak has increased the engagement with our clients allowing us to spend more time throughout the year on conversations about strategy and partnership maximization, instead of version wrangling and status meetings.” – Kate Kasabula

In order to help with the transition from excel sheets and Google Docs to Trak, Kasabula created buy-in from the organization and got the partners on board through a workshop led by CEO Cameron Oliver.

“We didn’t want to be in a situation where we were managing some accounts ‘traditionally’ and others through the software. We put all of our accounts in and highly encouraged them that this would be how we would be doing our asset management going forward. The other thing we did was host an interactive workshop for our partners. Cameron came in and introduced the software and ran through how it would work and answered any questions.”

Thanks to Trak, gone are the days of spreadsheet forwarding and lost emails, something that Kasabula touts as one of her favorite perks.

“For us, we can easily see what is still outstanding, the partner can still see what is outstanding, there is no longer this whole ‘I emailed it to you.’ and ‘Well I never got it.’ back and forth. Everything is right there now and we can mark it off and note when it has been received.  Efficiency and time management wise it has been a huge help.”