British Rowing announces extension to SAS Analytics partnership

SAS has extended its partnership as Official Analytics Partner for a further three years, until December 2020

British Rowing is delighted to announce that SAS, the global leader in analytics, has extended its partnership as Official Analytics Partner for a further three years, until December 2020.

The extension of the partnership comes off the back of four successful years working together, during which SAS has helped British Rowing gain a better understanding of the intelligence and value that data management and analysis can bring to a data rich environment.

Over the next three years, SAS will build on this work and help transform data analytics across the organisation. This will support British Rowing’s ambition to become a more data driven and insight-led organisation.

In addition to a substantial financial commitment, SAS will provide its market leading analytics software, consultancy services and training to support key projects covering British Rowing’s world class high performance programme, as well as the wider rowing community.

Building on the phenomenal success of British Rowing’s talent identification programmes, World Class Start, Para-rowing Talent ID and the High Performance Programme in Clubs, SAS will provide data analytics and reporting to help identify and develop the future stars of rowing looking ahead to Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028.

In order to better serve and grow British Rowing’s membership, SAS will provide its world leading software and expertise to develop a suite of real-time membership dashboards. These will be used by British Rowing’s senior management team to make insight-based decisions to help improve and promote the membership offer and provide insights into British Rowing’s education and training provision for clubs, coaches and rowers.

In addition, SAS will support the roll-out of rowing’s new domestic Competition Framework, that will help to create fairer, closer and more exciting racing through a ranking points system. SAS’ expertise in data analytics will be used to review in excess of 65,000 competition records captured during the pilot phase to help shape the points calculations that underpin the new Competition Framework.

Working with SAS across these projects will provide British Rowing with improved data architecture and enhanced analytics expertise that will support our ambitions to remain as one of the world’s leading rowing nations and further support our growing membership.

Commenting on the extension to the partnership, Andy Parkinson, CEO of British Rowing, said: “We are delighted to have extended our excellent partnership with SAS and I would like to thank them for their continued support of British Rowing. Over the past four years, SAS has really helped us lay the foundations of our data analytics capabilities and we are excited to be taking the partnership to a new level. By working with the global leader in data analytics, we are confident that we can achieve our ambitions to be a data-driven, insight-led organisation adding value to our sport on and off the field of play.”

Charles Senabulya, VP & Country Manager, SAS UK & Ireland, said: “It’s been really exciting working with British Rowing and being able to share in some of the outstanding successes they’ve had in competition. It’s also a great way to showcase the power of analytics and how it can help any organisation get an edge over the competition. We look forward to working with British Rowing on a number of new initiatives, not only to help develop future champions but also to support them in being able to make better, data-driven decisions as a governing body.”