Case Study

Building ECB's Safe Hands portal with Dynamics 365 and Power Apps

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is the national governing body for all cricket in England and Wales, supporting the game at every level – from grassroots to elite.

In 2020, ECB launched their strategy, ‘Inspiring Generations’, to encourage a new generation to believe that cricket “is a game for me”. Central to this mission is ensuring that safeguarding is embedded into the culture of cricket, to make the recreational game safe and welcoming for children, which is achieved through their safeguarding policy ‘Safe Hands’.

With a desire to use technology as a business enabler, ECB worked with Chorus to develop and launch the Safe Hands portal, using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Apps Portals, to help make cricket a safe game for all.

Goals

  • To make recreational cricket safer for all players
  • To develop a centralised system where ECB can manage and track safeguarding compliance requirements for 6,500 clubs nationwide
  • To launch a user-friendly portal where county club boards, clubs and administrators can easily manage and meet their safeguarding requirements

Solutions

  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 to centralise and manage all safeguarding data and processes
  • Power Apps portals to deliver a secure and intuitive end-user portal for self-service
  • Phased portal release to 100 clubs every week to stagger launch and smoothly manage implementation

Outcomes

  • Safeguarding embedded into everyday club operations for better management and operations
  • Centralised system with real-time visibility of compliance status for ECB across all clubs
  • A safer environment for recreational cricket players nationwide, backed by consistent and trackable standards

By working with Chorus and embracing these Microsoft technologies, we are better supporting our mission to make cricket a safe and enjoyable game for all.

CTOEngland & Wales Cricket Board (ECB)

Launching "Safe Hands"

As the national governing body, safeguarding children in cricket is a key focus and priority for ECB, as well as being a legal requirement under the Children Act 1989. To support this, ECB launched ‘Safe Hands’ in 2003 to establish clear policies and procedures for clubs to follow in order to meet minimum requirements. Following the launch of their Inspiring Generations strategy, the Safe Hands programme continues to provide a crucial foundation to help clubs build a safe and welcoming place for children to enjoy the sport.

With 39 county cricket boards and 6,500 clubs across England and Wales, managing the Safe Hands programme and helping clubs meet the safeguarding requirements was a time-consuming and complex process. To help embed safeguarding into cricket culture as part of their wider strategy, ECB looked to embrace technology to deliver an integrated system and portal for county cricket boards and clubs to better track and manage their compliance.

Safeguarding remains a key priority at ECB and we want make embedding safeguarding into clubs and cricket boards as simple and effective as possible” explains the CTO at ECB. “To do this, we wanted to embrace digital technologies to launch a new Safe Hands Management System that would allow us to use technology as an enabler. By working with Chorus, we were able to draw on their technical expertise to find the right solution and approach to meet our goals..

CTO, England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB)

Using Microsoft technologies

As ECB were already using Microsoft Dynamics 365 internally and familiar with the system, they wanted to explore how they could use Dynamics 365 to deliver the Safe Hands project. ECB and Chorus worked together through discovery workshops to discuss and design a high-level architecture of how this could be achieved, resulting in the use of Dynamics 365 for the back-office system and Power Apps portals for the front-end user portal. With the integration capabilities of Dynamics 365, the system was easily connected to other databases via APIs to centrally capture and manage all data.

Whilst Dynamics 365 was used for the back-end system, we recommended using Power Apps portals for the user-friendly portal where clubs and administrators would review and manage their data” explains Nick Murdock, Senior Technical CRM Architect at Chorus. “By using Power Apps portals, we could quickly deliver a fit-for-purpose solution that gave clubs and administrators secure access to their data, which would be automatically updated within the back-office system when changed. Not only does this allow clubs and individuals to better manage and find the information they need, but it also gives great benefits to the ECB Safe Hands team.

Nick Murdock, Senior Technical CRM Architect, Chorus

Adopting an agile approach

Delivering these systems required extensive discovery, planning, development and testing, with Chorus and ECB adopting an agile approach to manage the project. Workshops and communications were carried out entirely online with daily scrum stand-ups and weekly planning and playback sessions.

“The real strength of partnering with Chorus has been how adaptable and enjoyable they are to work with” says the IT Programme Manager at ECB. “When we transitioned to remote working, Chorus happily adapted to fit our ways of working which maintained our strong partnership and ensured that project deliverables weren’t impacted. We’ve really valued their expertise and ability to advise us on the best technical approach – and they aren’t afraid to challenge us.”

IT Programme Manager, England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB)

With the importance and scale of the portal roll-out, a phased release was chosen to minimise disruption, reduce risk and allow a smoother launch. A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was released to a trial county to gather early feedback, which was fed into the development cycle. Once ready, the portal was rolled out to 100 clubs each week to stagger the launch and reduce the potential strain on the ECB Customer Support team.

Steadily rolling out to 6,500 clubs

The new Safe Hands Management System (SHMS) portal provides a secure platform where Clubs and individuals can now store and manage all their Club information in one easy and accessible place. Through automated alerts and emails, Clubs can receive reminders of renewal dates for key criteria, such as DBS checks and Safe Hands training, so that they remain compliant.

The portal was initially rolled out to 1,765 clubs across England and Wales, before being upscaled to 3,000 clubs by the start of the 2022 season and to all 6,500 clubs by 2023.

These new systems make administration much quicker and easier now. We can gain insights into our clubs, enabling us to identify areas where we can grow the game whilst ensuring we are meeting the requirements set by the law and ourselves” concludes ECB’s CTO. “By working with Chorus and embracing these Microsoft technologies, we are better supporting our mission to make cricket a safe and enjoyable game for all.

CTO, England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB)

By working with Chorus, we were able to draw on their technical expertise to find the right solution and approach to meet our goals.

CTOEngland & Wales Cricket Board (ECB)

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