USA Swimming dives into data to empower future Olympians

Snapshot:

The challenge: USA Swimming struggled to dynamically segment and visualize its vast amounts of data, making it difficult for coaches, swimmers, parents, and members (totaling 400K potential end-users of data) to gain impactful insights regarding competitive swimming data that keep athletes competitive.

The solution: Sisense provided advanced segmentation and visualization capabilities through embedded, self-serve, user-friendly dashboards, a data warehouse, dynamic web access token technology, and composable development.

The impact: USA Swimming now has scalable, mobile- and user-friendly analytics on their public site. The data team can deliver meaningful, dynamic, accessible analytics to their members, 3x faster. Report update times went from weeks to the same day.

The efficiencies we’ve built with Sisense are tremendous, transforming our ability to deliver timely, impactful reports.

– Patrick Murphy, Senior Director of Data and Product, USA Swimming

Strengthening USA Swimming’s data strategy for athletes and coaches

USA Swimming is dedicated to promoting swimming across the United States. They support coaches, swimmers, and clubs by providing access to resources, training, and data, all to help athletes achieve peak performance. By modernizing its data capabilities, USA Swimming aims to enhance the development of athletes nationwide, and make self-serve analytics fully accessible to its nearly 400,000 members.

A recent article by Johnson and Wales University entitled “How sports analytics enhances performance and efficiency” highlighted several ways analytics are transforming sports, including recruitment, athletic performance; and even fan and club member engagement. When it comes to optimizing athletic performance, coaches can leverage user-friendly dashboards to identify the specific areas of player strength and weakness that will guide training and development.

How USA Swimming leverages data: business and athletic

USA Swimming uses data in two key areas: the business operations side and the athletic performance side. On the operational side, the organization tracks club size growth by the number of members. They also analyze retention rates by age and gender, and differentiate between athletes and non-athletes. This data-driven approach supports club growth by providing valuable insights into what strategies are working and which areas need improvement, enabling clubs to optimize their operations to better meet the needs of their members.

On the athletic performance side, USA Swimming uses data to support the athletes’ development. Various metrics are used to gain insights into improvement rates, categorized by age group, gender, swimming event, and more. In the future, they aim to make additional unique data cuts to explore different questions, such as comparing athletic performance in the context of club size and other factors.

We’re trying to enable our teams and coaches around the country to think in new ways and to look at data in different ways, and Sisense is helping us to do that.

– Patrick Murphy, Senior Director of Data and Product, USA Swimming

Navigating the data deluge

Before partnering with Sisense, USA Swimming faced several challenges.

Data overload

USA Swimming has the largest database of swim times in the world. However, the organization lacked effective tools to segment and dynamically visualize it.

Inaccessible analytics

Although USA Swimming had volumes of data, it was in static form, primarily PDFs. Murphy and the team realized they needed the ability to interact dynamically with the data to gain meaningful insights. A USA Swimming data team of three was using a different BI tool, and scalability was both a challenge and a concern. Specifically, from a cost perspective, it didn’t make sense to scale the entire membership base. Their custom-coded analytics were not user-friendly, which means that they weren’t accessible to people without some background in working with data.

No comparative insights

They didn’t have the functionality to provide comparative insights, which would help clubs understand their performance relative to national averages.

Analytics approach: Time for an update

USA Swimming acknowledged it needed to modernize its technology to stay competitive globally and effectively support its coaches and clubs. Thus, USA Swimming’s search for a data analytics partner began.

Why USA Swimming chose Sisense to ride the data wave

The USA Swimming team spent about three months researching new tools before deciding to partner with Sisense. They recognized their unique position as a non-profit organization with a massive volume of end-users. This meant they needed a solution that could scale to support their hundreds of thousands of users. Ultimately, they decided to partner with the Sisense team for the following reasons:

Collaborative conversations

Murphy said, “Our first call with Sisense was collaborative, fun even. That made us feel good about the support we’d potentially need going forward, which was a huge concern with other tools we were considering.”

Customer support

Murphy said, “What set Sisense apart was its responsive customer support; the ability for us to get an answer to a question almost immediately as we were learning a new tool. We knew we weren’t going to get that with legacy or out-of-the-box companies.”

Scalable solution

Most BI tools they considered had subscription models that required payment per use. However, Sisense offered a scalable solution that fit their needs perfectly. “We’re unique in that we have 400K members, so a per-member fee was out of the question. That ruled out a lot of other companies right away. Most of these tools charge you on a per-user basis,” Murphy said.

Dynamic web access token

The web access token was a deciding factor. In Murphy’s words, “The dynamic web access token solution was a huge selling point for us. And once we figured out how we could use the web access token, our minds were made up.”

For software developers and analytics app builders like Murphy and his team, the dynamic web access token solution solves critical issues regarding security, scalability, user experience, and maintenance. It provides a robust framework for managing access control dynamically, ensuring that the right users have the right access at the right time, while also simplifying the integration and management of various application components.

With Sisense, we can now present data that helps coaches and clubs understand their progress and trends more effectively. Before, it took six to eight weeks. Now it’s two days to build, and the report is out with the next release.

– Patrick Murphy, Senior Director of Data and Product, USA Swimming

Empowering data-driven decisions with Sisense

A better user experience

Before partnering with Sisense, USA Swimming wanted to make their data reporting “much more interactive, self-service, and faster for all users.”

Regarding faster updates, Sisense helped USA Swimming reduce report update times. Murphy said, “With Sisense, we can now present data that helps coaches and clubs understand their progress and trends more effectively, and much faster. Before, it took six to eight weeks. Now it’s two days to build, and the report is out with the next release.”

Specifically, Sisense helped USA Swimming provide an enhanced end-user experience with:

• New, interactive dashboards, accessible to a broader audience. The embedded dashboards enable dynamic, user-friendly data visualizations.
• Self-service analytics that allows users to customize their dashboards independently.
• Improved insights, delivered through the dashboards directly to its members. These insights enable clubs to compare their performance against national averages, which wasn’t possible before.

Murphy explained how these changes helped them meet their data accessibility goals, saying, “We’re trying to enable our teams and coaches around the country to think in new ways and to look at data in different ways, and Sisense is helping us to do that.”

Prior to Sisense

New dashboards powered by Sisense Compose SDK

The infrastructure behind the scenes

Murphy said, “The efficiencies we’ve built with Sisense are tremendous, transforming our ability to deliver timely, impactful reports.” To deliver an enhanced user experience, Sisense provided USA Swimming with:

• A high-performance analytics database. The Sisense-created database’s unique ability to dynamically determine which data source should power a given dashboard facilitated efficient data updates. This allowed the USA Swimming team to manage their vast volumes of data effectively. It also meant a huge jump in speed.
• Web access token to manage access control dynamically. The WAT simplified the integration of various app components and ensured specific user access.

Paving the way for future innovations

The team at USA Swimming is looking forward to leveraging Sisense to further enhance their end-user experience. By implementing Compose SDK on their public-facing website, they’ve already reduced load times and made data more accessible. Murphy explains the impact of these changes and what they mean for the internal team, as well as anyone using data on their site.

Mobile-friendly solutions

Murphy said, “The way we were working before with iFrames had limitations when it came to mobile. It’s not the best experience for the end-user. A big benefit of Compose SDK is the mobile-friendly nature of it for our users.”

Intuitive user experience, with increased speed and interactivity

Murphy explained how the user experience on the site will appear the same, but be faster and allow for more interactivity with the data, saying, “Compose SDK has allowed us to keep the user interface the same as what people saw before. So to an end-user, it’s not going to look much different. But, what’s great is that it’s significantly faster—it’s already been load-tested. It’s also going to be significantly more interactive.”

From static to interactive

Before working with Sisense, Murphy describes the extensive work that went into calling up the data, as well as the static result of that work, saying, “In the past, we’d custom-build a widget on our website, and then custom-build the queries, and the APIs that would call the data. And then, all you’d get was static information in a pdf.”

In contrast, by using Compose SDK, USA Swimming has enabled its end-users to now interact with the query outputs. Murphy says, “Now, you’ll get data that can actually be drilled into. There’s more interactivity between all these unique pages of data we’re creating.”

“It’s great. Our website will be what we’re calling a ‘data hub public site,’ and that’s just the start. We have so many ideas about where we can go. We aim to be the number one ‘go-to hub’ for swimming data.”

– Patrick Murphy, Senior Director of Data and Product, USA Swimming

The “go-to hub” for swimming data

By creating a data hub that maintains a consistent user experience across devices and offers deeper data insights through interactivity, Murphy and the team’s goal is to become the hub for swimming data. Murphy said, “It’s great. Our website will be what we’re calling a ‘data hub public site,’ and that’s just the start. We have so many ideas about where we can go. We aim to be the number one ‘go-to hub’ for swimming data.”

Revolutionizing data analytics for enhanced performance

USA Swimming’s data strategy is now one that allows them to deliver better analytics experiences, faster. Their collaboration with Sisense saves time and resources and enables coaches and clubs to easily call up actionable insights, supporting the goal of achieving excellence in swimming. Sisense’s advanced tools and scalable solutions are key to staying ahead in the competitive world of sports analytics.

By partnering with Sisense, USA Swimming is well-equipped to secure their standing as a best-in-class National Governing Body. That’s the power of effective data management and visualization in driving the big wins.