Sports has increasingly become a showcase for back-end business capabilities that have long eschewed the spotlight: analytics, data, accounting, etc…
This recent ESPN article on the Knicks showcases the importance of their contract pro and combining strategic procurement (contract negotiations, KPIs, expiration dates, payment terms, vendor and client responsibilities) with the accounting knowledge to enforce and fully leverage those terms. And the Knicks’ player procurement Brock Aller gets a nice glow-up here because of his expertise across these areas in his complex spend category: player contracts and options.
Basketball has increasingly made “cap-ology” or the management of each team’s salary cap an important topic, as it often defines the practical limits of how much a professional basketball team can choose to improve. There is a practical lesson here for strategic IT procurement (or really all procurement) professionals on how to structure, reallocate, and maximize IT investment on a fixed budget or within a budget cap. I especially like the use of laddered rates, date-specific cutoffs and performance, and the use of commoditized or overlooked assets to trade for cash or optionality are all mentioned or hinted at here.
Even if I’m not a fan, the resurgence of the New York Knicks is a great case for how procurement and accounting need to work more closely together, ideally with a bridge person, to maximize value.