A whole new ballgame: Surface tablets score a big hit with the Kansas City Royals

A new culture of change accelerated the rise of the Kansas City Royals from a hometown favorite to World Series Champions. The organization transitioned from the same pen-and-paper format scouts had used for years to Microsoft Surface Pro devices and sharing information in the cloud. This created efficiencies and empowered scouts to better analyze of the capabilities and value of the players on the field. The result? The team wins more often, can better evaluate the competition and can sign players that best fit its long-term goals.

Delivering a better experience

G&J Pepsi, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, has more than 1,600 employees focused on manufacturing, distributing, and marketing the full line of Pepsi-Cola products. Most of their staff spend their time in the field managing their retail accounts.

As the industry is becoming more reliant on mobile phones and tablets for business, Eric McKinney, Cloud Services Manager, was tasked with delivering more on-the-go services for the company. With a goal of becoming more efficient, gaining new insights, and keeping the company better connected with its customers, he set out to create a better experience.

The stories about the day-to-day lives of baseball scouts in the era before technology sound embellished, but they’re true. Scouts practically lived on the road, driving from town-to-town, trying to find the next great amateur player or discovering the strengths and weaknesses of the competition. And you could often spot a scout’s car by the paper scouting reports littering its dashboard, reports they rarely typed out to make their insights easily searchable in the future.

In both the minor and major leagues, the information obtained by full-time scouting professionals to help a team consider possible trades and prepare for upcoming games is often an important differentiator among organizations.

The people who scout baseball players for a living, love baseball and the idea of being part of something bigger than one person. These scouts often have the best seats in the stadium—right behind home plate, to help find the next player to bring that home-run-attitude to help their team succeed. Scouting is as old as baseball and so are many of the tools they use to track including pen, paper and clipboards. Some scouts may have a reputation for being set in their ways, but their team attitude is selflessness.

The art and science of scouting

Typically, baseball scouts are responsible for observing the game while simultaneously sorting through information on hand. According to Gene Watson, Sr. Director of Professional Scouting at the Kansas City Royals, every day his organization considers just about every player out there. Scouts don’t want to leave a single stone unturned. Watson says finding the right player comes down to the right mix of five ingredients:

• Tools: watching a player at bat and in the field to gauge his strengths and weaknesses.

• Statistics: the data on today’s players goes far beyond the statistics found on the back of a baseball card.

• Culture: beyond a players position on the field, the Royals organization cares how he would fit in with and improve the team.

• Makeup: great teammates, great mentors, great husbands, and great fathers blend in best with the Royals organization.

• Risk: this falls onto the scouts and organization. How much risk are they willing to accept in order to acquire a player?

When technology hits a home run

People don’t always think about technology first when it comes to baseball. And veteran scouts set in their ways often resist the idea of blending the two together. But that changed for the Royals once the organization brought in Brian Himstedt, Head of IT, and Alec Zumwalt, Director of Baseball Operations. These two recognized how technology can support the organization’s efforts to put a good product on the field and win baseball games. That willingness to change started at the top with Royals General Manager, Dayton Moore. Says Zumwalt, “ He’s always supported us. In any industry, when you encourage your employees to find ways to do their jobs better and become more efficient, that’s a game-changer.”

Change poses challenges for any organization. If it happens too fast, people may rebel against adoption. If it happens too slowly, they may find something else that works for them. “So how do we strike that balance? How do we find the best ways for technology to contribute to the product on the field? What’s the right combination of software and hardware?” Himstedt pointed out.

Microsoft Surface Pro at the bat

The Royals set out to find a device that all scouts could use, matching their mobility and speed with the familiarity of using pen and paper, plus making more information available at their fingertips than they ever had before. And that was Microsoft Surface Pro. With it, scouts get a portable, lightweight device that bundles Windows 10, Microsoft Office apps and the services highly-proactive teams expect, with numerous other applications to handle information management. Plus, it has the battery life of a laptop with exceptional screen quality. Says Himstedt, whose background is not originally in professional sports, “Access, maneuverability, and time efficiency are a big deal. You’ve only got so many hours in a day and you need to be at the ballpark at a certain time, and you have to review information before you arrive, and write and submit a number of reports before your day is done. Just being able to manage our time better thanks to using Surface devices has been incredible.”

Himstedt continues, “There’s really no part of our decision that involved adopting technology for technology's sake. We chose Microsoft tools to help people do their jobs better so that we can perform well on the field and win world championships.”

Using Surface Pen with their new device has helped many of the scouts transition smoothly, because it feels just like writing on a piece of paper. They don’t have to worry about marking up a screen or losing touch connectivity from point to point. It feels familiar and the adoption is easy.

“Everything happens so fast,” says Zumwalt. “Abbreviating. Changing colors. Switching from ink to a highlighter. I consider Surface Pen a powerful multi-tasking tool. I use it to log information and legibly read later what I was actually writing during a game.”

Not all saves come from the bullpen

The Royals adopted cloud-based services from Microsoft in addition to hardware. They use Office 365 to accelerate processes and save time. Says Zumwalt, “I had years’ worth of data I wanted to keep within the organization. So we used Microsoft OneDrive to back everything up and make it easily accessible for designated people throughout the Royals. By moving to the cloud, we’ve simplified the process of sharing information.”

“It wasn’t that long ago when Alec was one of the first scouts at the ballpark with a Surface device. Now we have waves of people in the organization asking how they can get their hands on one. We have definitely hit the acceleration point when it comes to broad adoption,” adds Himstedt.

Surface tablet earns a W

For long-time scouts, the introduction of Surface devices has improved overall efficiency. By using Surface devices, they get to spend more time observing and thinking, which maximizes their value. The less time they spend managing the information that they collect, the more valuable they can be. And it’s still science informing art. They just record and share the information they gather in a different way.

Zumwalt, who started his Royals tenure as a scout, says, “When I moved to using my Surface, I thought, ‘This flows a lot better.’ With so much information that's coming in, it can get lost. I feel like we’re able to really sift through our information, process it, and do a better job at the end of the day.”

The implementation of video has changed scouting. Now scouts use their Surface devices to instantaneously send video of a player pitching in Florida while they’re in Arizona, Missouri, and elsewhere. Thirty eyes in various locations all focused on one player multiplies the gut instinct while reducing scouts’ travel.

Watson, a 30-year veteran of professional baseball front offices, points out, “When our older guys see we’re actually doing a better job with our scouting reports while saving time, they become more apt to get on board. With the money involved with today’s players, you better know everything about that player. He’s an investment. So from a business standpoint it's no different than doing your due diligence like in any other industry.”

They put a ring on it

In the end, professional baseball is about winning. And those results speak for themselves. The Royals made it all the way to Game 7 of the World Series in 2014, and returned the following season to be crowned World Champions. Zumwalt summed it up by saying, “We had a special group of players for that World Series run in 2015. Those guys had come up together and learned how to win together. That ring represents a lot more than just winning the World Series. There are just so many people doing so many different jobs for our organization. And we’re all tied together. Whether it’s in I.T. or in analytics, or down in the coach’s office, we all always look for ways to do our job better.”