The Football Association
Creating a new digital ecosystem connecting and rewarding fans, players, coaches and volunteers across all journeys, from grassroots to elite
The context
The Football Association (FA) is responsible for every aspect of football in England, from the senior international teams through to the grassroots game.
As the official digital partner to the FA, as part of a two-year digital programme, Cognizant helped define and deliver a digital strategy based on three simple principles: to make participation in football easier, more enjoyable and more rewarding at every level. But the FA’s digital infrastructure was unable to support this vision, with more than 100 different websites, multiple technology platforms and numerous data sources.
Since embarking on the strategic partnership in 2017, Cognizant has designed, delivered and maintained a suite of digital products that simplify the many administrative tasks of playing a football match, whilst increasing our engagement through digital channels. Matchday is one of the flagship products that helps grassroots teams manage football on the day of the match.
Through England Football, Cognizant delivered a digital ecosystem for The FA, connecting and rewarding our fans, players, coaches and volunteers across all journeys, from grassroots to elite. Alongside Cognizant, we expanded the success of England Football by building the England Football Learning Hub, which reimagined our consumer-facing learning platforms to deliver a truly user-centred experience for coaches, first aiders, scouts and other users.
My role
I led the team from an experience and product design perspective, building and orchestrating multi-disciplinary practitioners across a range of product work streams to deliver a unified digital experience for football participants.
The football ecosystem encompassed multiple audience groups, including fans, adult players, youth players, referees, coaches, managers, club officials, parents, and teachers. Many participants belonged to more than one group - for example, as fans, players, and parents.
Our first challenge was to create a single Digital Engagement Platform: a suite of web applications built on a highly scalable cloud infrastructure, optimised for mobile devices, and unified by a single sign-on process for registration and authentication. Once the core platform was established, I drove the design and development of a series of digital products, each underpinned by rigorous user research to identify opportunities for improving participant engagement.
In total, we delivered five digital products. I oversaw the product and design work through a bi-weekly sprint approach, with the UX team working two sprints (one month) ahead of development. This enabled us to refine user stories with stakeholders, build prototypes tested with real users, and iterate based on feedback. Designs were only signed off once validated by the business and ready for development, ensuring quality and alignment at every stage.
The programme delivered significant outcomes:
A seamless digital experience that increased registrations and reduced drop-off at onboarding.
Higher levels of engagement across multiple participant groups, with clear adoption of new digital services.
Improved operational efficiency by reducing duplicate processes across platforms.
A scalable foundation for future digital initiatives within the football ecosystem.
The results
-
335%
increase in active
fan accounts -
9.5m
user interactions in year one - exceeding target by 250%
-
94%
customer satisfaction rating achieved within 12 months