Goal-Line Technology And Your Business

The lords of international soccer recently gave their approval for the use of technology that can tell if a ball crossed the goal-line for a goal.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Revolutionary for soccer but the same technology has been in use for tennis for quite some time. We’ve all seen the cool animations CBS provides during the U.S. Open although frankly I’d rather see another McEnroe tirade than an absolutely correct call.

The use of technology to improve upon the imperfections of human officials is widespread.  The NFL uses TV replay to get things right, as does the NHL and, to a more limited extent baseball.  Be that as it may, there was an interesting quote in the Reuters report on the introduction:

UEFA president Michel Platini is among those who fear that Thursday’s ruling will open the floodgates for other forms of technology to be introduced.  “I am not just wholly against goal-line technology, I am against technology itself because then it is going to invade every area of football,” he warned last week.

Sounds like quite the Luddite, but he’s not alone.  Baseball doesn’t use technology to call balls and strikes although it seems possible.  Other sports don’t employ technology, preferring to let the quirks of human referees remain part of the game.  What does this have to do with your business?

Your business might be in the same boat.  Developing strategies without planning a set of KPI’s to measure progress is the same mentality.  Not having a system in place to capture, analyze, and report on what’s going on the digital world is as well.  You wouldn’t dream of operating a business without some sort of financial reporting yet we often ignore many other pieces of vital information that could help us make the correct calls.

The technology in place won’t end all of the questionable goal calls in soccer.  That’s OK – we’re still talking about some of them (The Hand of God goal) 25 years later.  But if we’re to be talking about our businesses 25 years from now, we’d do well to take advantage of every piece of information we can.

You agree?