Widzew Łódź joins the digital premier league. How MakoLab supports champions above and beyond their game

Widzew Łódź, a brand that ignites the emotions of fans all over Poland, is not only a legend and a passion for sport, but also a dynamic business managing a complicated network of contracts, orders, invoices, licences and analyses. When the club’s board needed to instigate a digital transformation and reached out to us, we knew we’d be facing a challenge of premier league proportions. And we committed to it 100%.

The constant pressure to achieve results in both the game and the media goes hand in hand with the daily realities of business. Like any number of organisations with a long history, crucial processes at Widzew Łódź were still running on the old, traditional methods of circulating paper-based documents. This was triggering issues that were having a direct impact on the club’s operational efficiency.

·    Manual document processing: invoices, contracts, orders... every operation had to be serviced manually. It was time-consuming and created the risk of errors being made.

·    No automation: pivotal decisions and approvals waited in limbo for signatures, while the interdepartmental flow of information was slow and inefficient.

·    Limited flexibility: adapting quickly to new licensing, EU and other requirements was difficult and involved a great deal of work.

·    Hampered collaborations: the absence of a central document repository and clearly defined operational paths were complicating remote working and coordination between the sports and administrative divisions. 

Our goal was clear. We had to automate, centralise and accelerate the club’s processes.

At MakoLab, we believe that, while technology is the answer, asking the right questions first is vital. We therefore launched the project with a series of intensive analytical workshops involving the club’s key departments, from finance, via administration, to the sports division.

·    Business process and notation (BPMN): working closely with the club’s team, we used BPMN to map and visualise all the critical processes. This meant we could rapidly identify the areas with the greatest potential for streamlining.

·    An unshakeable base; the software requirements specification (SRS): one result of that work was a detailed SRS, the document that became the pillar of the entire deployment and a guarantee of compliance with European Union project requirements.

This was the foundation. And on it, we built a custom-designed platform rooted in a solid technological duo:

·    Alfresco enterprise content management (ECM): a secure, central document repository. Farewell to lost contracts, goodbye to endless searching for invoices and hello to having everything available in one organised system.

·    Camunda business process management (BPM): an automated engine that took over process coordination. The system now monitors deadlines, sends out notifications and assigns tasks to the right people.

The entire platform was integrated with the Comarch Optima finance and accountancy system used by the club. The outcome was a cohesive and effective digital ecosystem.

The digital transformation at Widzew Łódź is much more than the implementation of new software. It is a profound change to the quality of the way the entire organisation functions.

·    Full digitalisation and automation: The flow of invoices, contracts, orders and other documents has been completely transferred to the digital world. And the result? A significant reduction in processing time.

·Increased flexibility and mobility: the deployment of the electronic document flow has facilitated effective remote working and faster responses to changing realities.

·    Smart notifications: the system automatically sends out notifications about upcoming contract expiry dates, giving the club an edge in terms of planning and negotiations.

Lightning-fast work: with our precise analysis and agile approach, we shaved an impressive 42% off the 12 months scheduled for the project, completing it just 7 months.

The project MakoLab carried out for Widzew Łódź is an excellent illustration of our philosophy in action. We are much more than a supplier of technologies. Our company is a partner that blends a profound knowledge of business with extensive experience in developing and deploying solutions that actually work.

We understand the challenges our clients are facing and deliver the tools that really do streamline their operations and reinforce their competitiveness.

Because nowadays, in sport and business alike, the winners are those who succeed in combining talent with champion technologies!