Cricket World Cup 2015 breaks boundaries with SAP

SAP Australia and New Zealand today announced that the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 organising committee is running the SAP Business One application, as it delivers the tournament – across Australia and New Zealand – to the world.

The ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 organising committee has had to grow rapidly from start-up to small business in order to deliver a tournament with expected attendance of over one million fans, and that reaches over one billion people globally. As a company with a three-year lifespan, it needed an application that is simple, quick to implement and cost efficient. With that, the organising committee made the decision to run SAP Business One for the financial management of the tournament – which it implemented in just over six and a half weeks.

Luke Spano, Financial Controller, ICC Cricket World Cup 2015, said, “When we started to look for a system, the key things for us were that it had to be dynamic, flexible and have the ability to report across different budget levels, across three different currencies – Australian, New Zealand and U.S. dollars.”

With a complex charter of accounts stretched across two budgets – an event and host budget – SAP Business One is providing the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 the simplicity, efficiency and flexibility it needs.

“Having all our data in one location is fantastic,” continued Mr Spano. “Being able to conduct all of our reporting needs – such as daily ticketing reports – from any location is not only critical, but adds real business value to the entire organisation.

“As we got closer to the tournament we had to make decisions instantly. And now we are in the midst of it, we can’t be affording to wait before we act. Having real-time data and insight is empowering all of our business groups to make the accurate and immediate decisions that are crucial to the success of the ICC Cricket World Cup.

“SAP Business One is our single source of truth across Australia and New Zealand, and is enabling us to run lean as a team and focus on adding value to the wider organisation. Instead of doing the administrative work in the background, we can focus on real-time analysis and delivering insight which adds business value to our stakeholders.”

Greg Miller, Vice President and General Manager, Global Partner Operations at SAP Australia and New Zealand, said: “The ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 is a true example of a lean and agile small business running simple. The complexities associated with delivering such a tournament are encountered by businesses of all sizes every day. With SAP Business One, small and midsize businesses can better manage every aspect of their operations – from sales and customer relationships to financials.”

SAP Business One empowers small businesses to find innovative ways to reach new customers, operate across multiple countries and subsidiaries, maximise efficiency and drive profitable growth. It is available on premise, in the cloud, and is powered by SAP’s in-memory computing platform SAP HANA.