The Indianapolis Indians Minor League Baseball TM (MiLB) team decided to up its organizational game by replacing in-house printers with Sharp multifunctional printers (MFPs). This transformation helped increase corporate sales revenue by 150 percent.
The Indianapolis Indians Minor League Baseball TM (MiLB) team decided to up its organizational game by replacing in-house printers with Sharp multifunctional printers (MFPs). This transformation helped increase corporate sales revenue by 150 percent.
Business Environment Challenges
Located just a few blocks west of downtown Indianapolis, Victory Field stands out as a lone landmark for baseball in a city famous for its professional sports franchises. Home of the Indianapolis Indians, the city’s Triple-A club plays its games mere minutes away from Lucas Oil Stadium, Bankers Life Fieldhouse and the worldrenown Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Indians are currently the only MiLB team vying for relevance in the highly competitive market. So to remain an entertaining and viable option for their sports-obsessed but potentially inundated audience, the Indians were forced to adjust how they did business.
Business Technology Solutions
Despite being recognized as the “Best Minor League Ballpark in America” by Baseball America and Sports Illustrated, Victory Field underwent extensive renovations, a full 14 years after opening its gates for the first time. The team updated its press box and indoor/outdoor luxury suites, revamped the Captain Morgan Cove – a premium seating hangout just beyond the left field foul line – and outfitted its main corridor with new Sharp LED televisions for a greater fan experience.
Beyond the aesthetically stimulating and crowd-pleasing endeavors, the Indians also took steps to make the back end and less glamorous functionalities of the ballpark operate more efficiently. As part of the organization’s facelift, the Indians replaced their former in-house printers with an assortment of color MFPs from Sharp to be housed in their administrative offices, the team’s ticket office and even the clubhouse.
The team uses its color MFPs to create daily scorecards that change with each new series, as well as ticket sales fliers, game notes, rosters and inning-by-inning updates for the press box. More importantly to the organization, the MFPs are also used to create proposals and new business presentations for potential corporate sponsors. The team is able to keep its printing in-house which saves from outsourcing every print project, which can get costly quickly.
Innovative Results
Every offseason, the Indians’ front office typically distributes 100-200 sponsorship packets to potential clients for new sponsorship opportunities. These sales are essential for the growth of the franchise and primarily support the type of renovation projects the team enjoyed in 2010. Prior to purchasing the new printers, the Indians garnered an annual revenue of roughly $1M in sales from sponsors. Since its partnership with Sharp, the team has enjoyed an increase in sales of more than 150 percent.
While this sort of financial bump can’t be solely attributed to upgraded MFPs, the team acknowledges that the cleaner, more professional look of its presentations have helped build a clientele of sponsors that they typically didn’t retain as an organization. The Indians believe the heightened quality of the presentations and sales packets has directly contributed to this substantial increase in sales revenue.
Since its partnership with Sharp, the Indians have enjoyed more success than just a fancier stadium and increased corporate sales. The 2013 team won its division and even led all MiLB teams in attendance numbers for its first time ever, with more than 637,500 fans visiting Victory Field during the regular season. Is this sort of invigorated performance on the field due entirely to new MFPs? Probably not, but the organization’s bump in corporate sales and additional revenue speak volumes for the backend improvements that the team has made in recent years.
The team is able to keep its printing in-house which saves from outsourcing every print project, which can get costly quickly.