The 33rdTeam
Honk thoseVuvuzelas!
The 2010 FIFA World Cup saw 145 goals. A memorable hat-trick by Higuain. An infamous kung-fu kick by Nigel De Jong. A semi-final spectacle that saw the Netherlands beat Uruguay 3–2. The arrival of a new German bomber called Thomas Muller who would light the stage four years later. And there was also time for one last hurrah for the evergreen Diego Forlan. Like its predecessors, the tournament too had its share of shimmies and sashays, outrageous tricks and tragic misses.
Vamos Espana!Espana Para siempre!
But 2010 will always be remembered as the World Cup in which Spain’s fleet-footed geniuses fulfilled their collective destiny. With Real Madrid galacticos hand-in-glove with Barca’s geniuses, Casillas one with Ramos, and Xavi pulling the strings and making sure that the eventual champions were always in sync. When the Spanish armada arrived, they delivered courtesy of an unforgettable Iniesta volley watched by 700 million people.It was, as they say, a Spanish historia, Spanish tiempo.
The33rdTeam
The 2010 FIFA World Cup also saw the debut of another team. A team without a country or nationality. A team united by the goal of delivering a perfect tournament. A team of 140 people, the World Cup’s largest.
Team Tech Mahindra*
The first world up on African soil was also Tech Mahindra’s first as an end-to-end IT solutions provider for a major global sporting event. And the numbers sum up the enormity of the task:
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Over 31 days for 32 teams, across 10 venues and 64 games, we had to gear up and roll our sleeves to manage a billion dollars of technological assets, a million hours of development work, three million tickets, 250,000 accreditations, 130,000 volunteers, and 1,000 vehicles.
From Johannesburg to Pretoria, from Cape Town to Durban, Tech Mahindra had to deliver IT solutions in a space that wasn’t about technology at all.
How did we ensurea smooth-as-Sneijder tournament?
Our first step was creating a centralized IT Command Centre to which local operational teams and even the FIFA global head office would connect with. The complexity of the job also saw us create FIFA’s first cloud-based scalable Event Management System, one that featured accreditation, volunteer and staff management, ground transportation services, spaces and material planning, and ticketing and hospitality services. It culminated in a ticketing system that helped sell more than 3 million tickets in an easy and effective manner.
Our task was to innovate and create IT solutions for fans, not customers.
With the fans in mind, we also assembled a multi-lingual customer service process for customers, a first of its kind support team fluent in English, German, French, and Spanish. It made buying, transferring, and cancelling tickets quick and easy, providing match day information and ticket fulfilment services. A robust Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan ensured zero glitches, leading to happy fans the world over. Over 200,000 calls were handled over a five month period prior and during the World Cup by our associates in Hyderabad, leveraging Tech Mahindra’s web and telecom infrastructure familiar to Fortune 500 clients.
And as the Cup rumbled on, we made sure that innovation scored a brace with the FIFA extranet & intranet.
What do Diego Forlan, Wesley Sneijder, David Villahave in common
They were the best three players at the World Cup, winning the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Balls! The Golden Ball Polling Application, native to the Media Channel Extranet, facilitated their nominations and wins. Once the Technical Study Group (TSG) sent their shortlist, accredited media voted on the extranet. A complex system of rules computed the percentage votes and weightage for each selection, providing results in real time based on the votes that have been cast. These results were then combined with the polling results from FIFA.com to announce the winners.
Facilitating Forlan’s win was one of our last jobs,and we were proud of the fact that like an accomplished goalkeeper, our performance was barely noticeable.
It meant that our innovative products and services behind stadia across the nation enabled seamless electronic ticket sales and hassle-free accreditation.
It meant that 2.4 billion fans across 214 countries could watch the world’s most beautiful game with no hiccups and no stoppage times.
Most of all, it meant that as the tournament’s 33rd team, we went the distanceAND GOT THE JOB DONE.
*Mahindra Satyam was a Tech Mahindra owned subsidiary when it provided IT services for the FIFA World Cup 2010. Mahindra Satyam merged with Tech Mahindra in 2013.