FOREWORD

Arabel Bailey - Managing Director, Accenture Digital, UK and Ireland

Working with the RBS 6 Nations as Official Technology Partner has been a journey of discovery for Accenture Digital. Since 2012 we’ve been developing and showcasing new and emerging digital technologies that are changing the way fans engage with Rugby’s Greatest Championship.

Being able to explore and experiment with leading-edge technologies, we’ve highlighted the possibilities not only for sports fans, but for a much wider business audience.

Sports fans and consumers’ behaviour is changing, driven and facilitated by how they interact with technology. This is increasingly relevant across different business contexts, whether it’s a fan checking on their team’s performance or checking their bank balance. Fans and consumers now expect all their digital interactions to be every bit as good as their most recent great experience.

For enterprises too, digital is opening new realms of possibility. The advanced and visual analytics we’ve developed for the RBS 6 Nations enable fans to ‘see beyond’ the traditional statistics and gain a new perspective on the game. The ability to visualise the huge volume of information each game generates can reveal new insights through patterns, trends and themes that are otherwise hidden from view. Developing the same analytical capabilities, turning big data into usable insights, is critical for all businesses today.

By applying cutting-edge technologies to the world of sport, we can look ahead into the digital developments that all businesses must embrace in the next few years, in order to unlock trapped or unseen value. For instance, we will see the huge possibilities that the Internet of Things

(IoT) introduces through a world of connected objects becoming an essential new platform for all businesses, dramatically changing how they interact with consumers and run their organisations.

Virtual, mixed and augmented reality, have also developed rapidly in the last few years. In 2016, we introduced the first Virtual Reality (VR) proof of concept for the RBS 6 Nations. For those we introduced to this new technology, it really was a case of ‘seeing is believing’ – a truly immersive and interactive solution that reinvents fans’ experience. As the technology becomes more mainstream VR and Augmented Reality (AR) will break out in a much broader range of applications that will open opportunities across a wide range of industries.

Of course, digital also presents new challenges. Understanding and connecting evolving technologies together in a business context is not easy. In addition, maintaining pace with the new while at the same time attending to business as usual is another key challenge. What’s the answer? There is no single solution. But above all, agility and experimentation is essential. In the digital era the luxury of time is no longer available to anyone, so being prepared to trial, test and (sometimes) fail is critical.

It’s an approach that we’ve embraced in our work with the RBS 6 Nations; experimenting and developing every year, keeping the experiences we deliver to fans fresh and at the leading edge. I hope that you find this paper interesting and stimulating. As you’ll read, there’s never been a more exciting time in the world of digital – and that applies in sport and everywhere else!

INTRODUCTION

The RBS 6 Nations is a tournament steeped in history, but for the last four years, it’s also provided a forum for showcasing how the latest digital technologies can engage fans in completely new ways in the future, whether watching at home or in the stadium.

Sport doesn’t come much more ‘real’ than rugby. Each match is a hard-fought, visceral contest – to watch as well as to play. But that’s not to say that the experience can’t be enhanced with digital technology. It’s exactly what Accenture has been doing since 2012 when we started a relationship with the RBS 6 Nations as Official Technology Partner. Our work has focused on three main areas of digital technology: analytics; mobility and more recently, virtual reality. In this paper, we look at some of the innovations we’ve developed and created – and some of the challenges and opportunities they present for the wider business world.

Since 2012 Accenture has been enhancing the fan experience, helping the RBS 6 Nations respond to the changing needs of its fan-base by providing innovative digital solutions in three key areas:

Rugby’s Greatest Championship; where tradition meets technology

During the course of the RBS 6 Nations, Accenture’s analytics experts process more than 28.5 million rows of data. Using this data and advanced algorithms, we created our Analytics Dashboard which presents dynamic and digestible features which display insightful stories and provide a deeper understanding of the match stats and data beyond the obvious.

ANALYTICS

Accenture created and continues to deliver the official Championship app, now available on Android, Kindle Fire and iOS including Apple Watch, in English, French and Italian. The app provides play-by-play text from live data feeds, integrates visual analytics features and enables fans to share opinions and statistical facts through links to social media including integrated Twitter™ feeds.

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For the 2016 RBS 6 Nations, the development of a VR proof of concept - the first of its kind in rugby - allowed Accenture to demonstrate how analytics can be applied to an interactive, fully immersive experience. In 2017, we are developing a cinematic full body mixed reality experience that extends virtual reality from the individual to a wider audience.

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Helping fans see rugby beyond the game – and taking business insight to a new level

The cloud-powered analytics engine Accenture built for the RBS 6 Nations enables us to process 3,000,000 pieces of raw information from every match and turn them into rich rugby stories. The technology is impressive, but the truly ground-breaking part is the unique #Seebeyond insights, experiences and emotions we deliver to fans.

SEEING BEYOND, GIVING OUR AUDIENCE A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Clearly, a lot of the excitement in rugby comes from the energy and action on the pitch. In a world where fans routinely use digital devices as second or even third screens to expand their big-match enjoyment, there’s a huge opportunity to dovetail physical and digital to take their engagement and immersion to a whole new level.

That’s the opportunity we seized with our RBS 6 Nations partnership. Collaborating with world rugby experts, like ex-South Africa and Italy coach Nick Mallett, to provide the rugby insight, we created algorithms that score every on-pitch action as either positive or negative. Data is then fed into our visual analytics engine to create visualisations such as the Momentum Tracker – a compelling, fact-based visual representation of how the likely outcome of the match is shifting.

Similarly, our capture and analysis of every single action and contribution by each player means we can nominate the ‘Accenture Team of the Week’ on the basis of hard data, rather than gut-feel. Fans can drill down to see exactly why that player was the stand-out performer in their position, including his every pass, tackle and interception. Using data to drive performance works in other sports too. For example, we’re

helping the Ducati motor racing team in Italy run visual analytics that bring together a wide range of factors, from track conditions to weather forecasts to tyre wear. But this is just a foretaste of the massive opportunity to elevate performance across all enterprises.

FROM RAW DATA TO ACTIONABLE INSIGHT

This advance from gut-feel to data-driven insight – enabled by analytics – is hugely relevant to all enterprises in all industries. Every day, executives make management decisions based on a combination of headline numbers and intuition. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong. But imagine how much greater the chances of being right are if you can drill down beneath the top-line numbers in real time to see the underlying reasons and drivers explicitly through clear visualisations?

The result? Better, faster decisions founded on hard fact, not vague sentiment. And we’re finding that more and more of our clients are grasping the scale of this opportunity, and looking to use data-driven approaches to transform their ability to understand and optimise business performance.

Nick Millman - Analytics Lead, Accenture Digital, Europe, Africa and Latin America

BUSINESS LESSONS FROM THE SPORTING ARENA

• Use advanced analytics and algorithms to make better data-driven predictions Whether it’s to run a water treatment plant more efficiently, or optimise production from an offshore gas rig by anticipating and preventing outages. • Present and consume data-driven insights in visualised formats Guide users to the information that really matters while avoiding information overload. • Grow your use of the cloud Bring the combination of low cost and high scalability needed to experiment with new ideas, so you can fail fast when they don’t deliver, or scale up quickly when they do.

No area of any business is immune to the potential benefits of these actions. And this message is getting across – we’re increasingly finding demand for analytics-based solutions coming not from the CIO or CTO, but direct from business or functional leaders.

Real-world clients are reaping the rewards. Like the UK’s Thames Water, an early-mover in the intelligent use of real-time data to monitor its assets. Thames Water is deploying advanced analytics that enable it to anticipate and respond in close to real-time when faced with adverse events and critical situations. Australian oil and gas company Woodside, is using predictive analytics for maintenance and process-control in its production operations. The use of advanced analytics for these enterprises can provide invaluable insights, tapping into previously unused data sets in order to increase productivity and reduce risk. Using the big data available from continuously regulated assets, from physical equipment to highly skilled staff, algorithms can track trends and therefore predict downturns in productivity, highlight missed value opportunities and even warn users of impending risks, such as equipment damage.

These businesses – and many more worldwide – are realising major benefits today. To do the same, businesses can start by pinpointing where,

in their organisation, visual analytics can deliver the biggest benefits at pace; identifying the skills and capabilities they’ll need; and then launching agile experiments and prototypes to test out the opportunities. And when something flies, scale up. Fast.

VISUAL ANALYTICS

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Ben Salama - Industrial Internet Lead, Accenture Digital, Global

Accenture research shows that more than 80% of consumers now habitually use a second screen while watching TV. Smartphones and tablets provide new ways to interact and engage with content.

No surprise, then, that in the years since Accenture and the RBS 6 Nations started working together, the Accenture-created mobile app has played a key role in driving fan engagement and creating new ways for them to experience the game they love. Developed from the ground up as an innovative channel to give fans news, information and analysis that they would not be able to find anywhere else – the app’s been a stunning success, hitting close to 4 million downloads across 200 countries since it was launched.

Critically, before development began in earnest, Accenture took a decision to get fans involved in the design of the app from the start. It’s a user-centric approach that’s now recognised as the hallmark of effective digital development, but which back in 2012 was revolutionary. As a result of understanding what RBS 6 Nations fans wanted, the app’s development and functionality reflects the three distinct stages of involvement with the Championship they pass through – before, during and after the match.

Recognising that what fans want changes according to where they are in that cycle, the app’s designed to do different things and deliver relevant news, social interactions and analysis that

will enable fans to get the most from every stage. Built originally as an app for iOS, it’s now also available on the Android and Kindle Fire platforms. And the latest development has seen the app evolve to work on the Apple Watch, giving fans yet another way to stay in touch with developments on and off the field.

ENHANCED EXPERIENCES – FROM THE SOFA TO THE STADIUM

As well as fans using a second or even third screen to augment their viewing, we’re also seeing developments in mobile that enhance the live fan experience in the stadium itself. In 2015, we created a wearable headset proof of concept for Google Glass which enabled spectators in the stadium to watch the game, while a small screen in the corner of their eye-line provided key statistics, patterns and player-tracking. Now, the proliferation of sensors, connectivity and mobility creating the IoT will

From second screen to connected stadium, putting the action in the palm of fans’ hands

MOBILITY

change how a stadium – or indeed any public venue – connects with fans or customers, personalising experiences and providing them with innovative new services. Sensors can detect, for instance when a fan enters the ground, grant them access via the fan’s mobile device, provide directions to the seat and even be used to order merchandise or food and have it delivered. It’s something we’re developing today through our partnership with the NBA team the Golden State Warriors from San Francisco, to make the Chase Center arena into a connected stadium.

GETTING TO THE HEART OF THE ACTION

The IoT can even be extended to fans watching at home. Fans link to a favourite player via a sensor embedded in that player’s shirt and not only see what the player is doing, but have a multi-sensory encounter, including ‘feeling’ what a player feels. Far-fetched? Not really. We’ve already seen attempts to create a smart shirt that gives fans the ‘feeling’ of the players on the pitch. As the proliferation of data continues, and consumers want to get ever closer to the players, it’s an area set for massive growth that’ll see the home consumer engaging with sport in an entirely new way. Developments during our partnership with the RBS 6 Nations highlight that the pace of digital innovation is so rapid, that the way fans engage with the sports they follow is changing beyond all recognition.

These are lessons that all businesses need to take on board as they deal with the ‘always on, always moving’ consumer. The combination of pervasive connectivity, sensors and mobile devices is beginning to show how the physical world can become as rich a source of data as its online equivalent. There is a major opportunity available for companies to use data to help enhance and curate a consumer’s journey in a specific physical context, whether that’s at a sports or entertainment venue, a shopping mall, an airport or even at the gym. And it’s the IoT that will form the bridge between the online and offline worlds.

Just as important as these consumer developments are what’s taking place in the industrial and enterprise settings. Mobile digital technologies are transforming the efficiency and safety of many roles and tasks in industrial contexts. Sensors can now remotely monitor the performance and health of a wide range of assets, and help businesses achieve predictive maintenance capabilities. Engineers and

maintenance crews can be equipped with mobile devices, wearables and visualisation tools that enable ‘over the shoulder coaching’ helping to get the most from scarce and expensive expertise out in the field.

As our work with the RBS 6 Nations demonstrates, mobile technology is reinventing experiences and bringing new dimensions to sports fans, consumers and businesses. Perhaps most exciting is the combination of mobility, connectivity and analytics that the IoT makes possible. Businesses seeking to harness this potential need to ensure they understand the complexities that developing new mobile solutions involves. The number of sensors just within the average smartphone raises technical and design challenges that require expertise and a well-developed ecosystem, to ensure that mobility offerings delight consumers and untapped value can be accessed through digital solutions.

BUSINESS LESSONS FROM THE SPORTING ARENA

• User experience is key Before building an app or new digital service, think about how your consumers engage with your product or service today, how they need and want different things at different times and contexts. Understand what they’re looking for. Build the experience around their needs and use digital channels to get the feedback that will enable you to constantly refine and adjust.

• Consider your digital business case carefully Invest in new solutions only in areas where you can add real value and gain new data insights, as technological complexities and design limitations can be challenging.

• Get up close and personal Connecting smart devices and sensors will provide a wealth of consumer data from the physical world. The challenge is to use it to enhance fan and customer experiences with truly personalised services that target the creation of millions of audiences of one, rather than a single, but undifferentiated, audience of millions.

Adam Nagus - Visual Intelligence and Analytics Director, Accenture Digital, Global

Watching a team is one thing. Being on the pitch with the players takes interaction to a whole new level. That’s the promise of virtual reality, and it’s why since 2016 Accenture and RBS 6 Nations have been pioneering new ways to bring fans right into the action using virtual reality technology.

Until fairly recently Virtual Reality (VR) was seen as a niche platform that would appeal to a small number of users, but was unlikely to become a mainstream technology anytime soon. This all began to change around the time Facebook bought Oculus Rift, a crowd-funded business developing an accessible and affordable consumer VR technology.

In 2016, Accenture Innovation developed a proof of concept for the RBS 6 Nations on the Oculus Rift platform. As well as offering a uniquely immersive experience, VR also provides a powerful way to highlight visual analytics. We brought in well-known rugby personalities, like ex-England international and 2003 Rugby World Cup winner Ben Kay, to help create a storyline and interactions combining real-world rugby locations and virtual worlds.

A combination of scanning technology to capture the behind-the-scenes areas of the RBS 6 Nations key stadia, and a virtual representation of the stadium itself, provides users with an experience that’s second

only to being there in person. With the environment built, the next stage of the process was designing the experience.

Users get a real sense of the journey that players take, from the changing rooms to being on the pitch. iMax-style screens show highlights of past games, and a giant hologram of Ben Kay provides commentary. Above his head, users can look at data visualisations that cover the action. Enabling users not only to see but to interact with the virtual world is a key aspect of our VR ambitions. In the RBS 6 Nations demo, users can see how well they can kick penalty goals through the uprights, using a games controller. For the 2017 RBS 6 Nations Championship, we’ve developed a cinematic, full-body, mixed reality experience that extends virtual reality from the individual to a wider audience. Interacting with life-sized rugby players on the pitch, fans can drill down into team-level analytics, while our green screen studio captures the virtual action and broadcasts it in real time for onlookers to enjoy.

The immersive properties of Augmented Reality (AR) and VR create a real step change in user experience. Virtual reality puts the user in totally new worlds, with unlimited possibilities. But there are other cases where augmented reality will provide a more practical and useful solution. In an industrial context, for example, users will need to combine the real

New world rugby

VIRTUAL& AUGMENTEDREALITY

world with overlays of information and visualisations that will allow them to do their job more efficiently, effectively and safely. Given its ability to blend real world with digital information and visuals, AR will probably have a stronger use case in the future in enterprise settings, but the technology is still some way behind the advances that we’ve seen in VR.

Nevertheless, virtual reality offers a wide range of business applications; from healthcare, sports and training, to health and safety, scientific exploration, and tourism. Accenture has presented the RBS 6 Nations VR solution to senior decision makers in the UK, showing leaders it’s possible to create virtual environments in which remote participants share the same space, and see the same information. This digital solution has enormous potential for rapidly assembling disparate teams to respond to a sudden event. Accenture Innovation has also created a next-generation virtual boardroom solution, enabling executives and their colleagues to share the same environment, information and media wherever they are in the world, and interact with one another’s avatars.

In the healthcare sector, we’re seeing VR as a safe and scalable training tool for clinicians learning how to carry out procedures and diagnoses. It’s also being used as a therapeutic tool, for example, to help cure phobias such as a fear of heights and even spiders. For tourism, Accenture’s created applications for Google Cardboard (a cheap and accessible way to turn smartphones into virtual reality headsets), enabling users to explore different US national parks and museums. Or just imagine the possibilities that VR offers to marketers. For example, rather than showing an ad of a car, VR can put the consumer behind the wheel.

FROM CORE USERS TO MASS ADOPTION

VR has, until recently, been at the early stage of development and the technology remains relatively cumbersome. But we believe the next generation will overcome that lack of mobility and the need to be tethered to a powerful PC. From a business perspective, we are seeing the scaling up of interactive VR software capabilities, so that the creation of VR solutions becomes easier. As it

does, more businesses will be able to create and build virtual environments that they can use both to engage consumers, collaborate more effectively with business partners and up-skill their employees safely and at cost.

VR is therefore set to become a fully-industrialised platform that enables businesses to roll out solutions at scale. But as they embrace the exciting possibilities, they need to make sure that they can create a valid use case that makes sense for their consumers and staff, and delivers an experience that will inspire and excite them. It’s really important therefore to understand how the technology works and its limitations. VR is a great showcase for a business’s ability to innovate, but it’s not yet at the stage of mass adoption. However, rapid advances mean that pervasive use is not that far away. This is a technology that fans and businesses alike will want to watch closely.

NEW WORLD RUGBY

BUSINESS LESSONS FROM THE SPORTING ARENA

• Know your use case Consider the value of implementing VR or AR into your company, and experiment with innovative solutions where these emerging technologies can add most value. • Be agile Hardware, software and platforms for VR and AR are changing at a rapid pace. Adopting the technology will require an agile approach, with the ability constantly to adapt to new iterations and platforms as they improve. • Maintain a close, watching brief The industrialisation of VR as a business solution, rather than purely for entertainment, is imminent. Keep an eye on the latest innovative experiences to see how they’re being applied across other industries and understand how they could integrate in your business.

SPORTAND

BUSINESSNick Mallett - Former Italy and South Africa Coach & Accenture Analysis Team member

A match made in heaven

As part of the Accenture Analysis Team, rugby legend Nick Mallett has played a key role in the development of the digital experiences we’ve delivered for the RBS 6 Nations. Here, he sums up his view of the impact technology is making on sport: “Digital technologies are creating incredibly exciting experiences for fans, players and coaches alike. For example, the analytics that Accenture delivers helps fans see things that they would normally miss, and gives them a much richer understanding of the action on the pitch. As a sport, rugby’s getting faster all the time. But so is the development of digital technology and the advances we’re seeing are revolutionising how we watch – and take part in – the game. Virtual reality, for example, means fans can see what players see – a completely new perspective on the sport they love. As a coach and as a player, you never stand still. You’re always looking forward to the next opportunity. And it’s the same with digital technology. I can’t wait to see what’s next.”

All businesses should share Nick’s excitement. Digital allows them to reinvent the art of the possible. They can connect with their customers, understand their businesses – and in ways that just a few years ago were straight out of science fiction. The speed and extent of change means every business needs to pay close attention.

Multiple advanced and innovative technologies are coming of age at the same time – from advanced analytics and mobility to virtual, mixed and augmented reality. What’s more, they’re converging to create massive waves of disruption for businesses, they are going to have to not just rethink how they do things, but also re-examine what they do. And this new digital reality is not going to happen tomorrow. It’s right here, right now. With appropriate digital initiatives, they can pursue a fast, effective route to innovative results for their customers, employees and throughout the enterprise. But to achieve that, they need to make sure that their organisation is ready for digital. Agility is essential. Experimentation and a ‘fail fast’ approach is equally important. Understanding what customers want and designing new services that place them at the centre is fundamental.

As we’ve shown with our work with the RBS 6 Nations, digital has the power to create completely new value, excitement, engagement and insight. The inspiration is there. Every business now needs to pick it up and run with it.

Arabel Bailey Managing Director, Accenture Digital, UK and IrelandArabel leads the Accenture Digital practice in the UK and Ireland and represents Digital on the UK and Ireland Executive Committee. Our Digital practice consists of around 800 specialist practitioners, covering skills across service design, big data and analytics, mobility, marketing, web and eCommerce and social media. Digital is the fastest growing part of the Accenture business and the catalyst for the reinvention of the professional services company for the Digital Age.

Arabel is a Managing Director and has spent 25 years in Accenture delivering technology programmes for clients across all industries and specialising in transformational change.

Nick Millman Analytics Lead, Accenture Digital, Europe, Africa and Latin AmericaNick Millman is a Managing Director with Accenture Digital and is responsible for Data & Analytics Delivery across Europe, Africa and Latin America. He works with organisations to harness the value of data and analytics to improve business outcomes. During the course of his 22-year career with Accenture, Nick has accumulated broad experience in this field including strategy and architecture formulation, business case development, requirements definition, technology selection, technology delivery and deployment. Nick speaks at industry events and makes contributions to media articles on a regular basis.

Ben Salama Industrial Internet Lead, Accenture Digital, GlobalBen leads the Connected Operations practice within Accenture Digital, bringing the value of the Industrial Internet to clients worldwide and enabling them to benefit from productivity improvements, as well as to create new services and realise new revenue opportunities. Ben has previously led Accenture’s Mobility sales & consulting team for UK and Ireland with an objective to embed mobility into every aspect of clients’ businesses as they transition to become ‘connected enterprises’. Ben has nearly 30 years’ experience as a business leader in the systems integration, software products, and high-tech and financial services industries, as well as extensive international experience.

Adam Nagus Visual Intelligence and Analytics Director, Accenture Digital, GlobalAdam joined Accenture in October 2004 and has worked for the last 13 years in Business Intelligence, Analytics and Data Management. Adam created a new Visual Analytics practice over 4 years ago focusing on using the latest technologies, innovations and methodologies to create a new delivery organisation, driving insight using engaging visual applications. Over the last year, Adam has used his experience to develop a virtual reality delivery capability in Accenture, which focuses on creating immersive experiences and tools for all professional workers. Originally from Liverpool, England – Adam is now based in London with teams located in most major cities across the globe.

Nick Mallett Former Italy and South Africa Coach & Accenture Analysis Team memberNick Mallett is a former South Africa rugby union player and coach. His coaching career includes some of the best teams in rugby: Italy, the Springboks, Stade Français, the Barbarians and a World XV and he has become known as one of the most analytical coaches in the rugby world. For the past three years, Nick has been a key member of the Accenture Analysis Team, helping to bring thought leadership to Rugby’s Greatest Championship.

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