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CONSOLIDATION
To drive efficiencies and higher levels of operational
effectiveness, the administration made significant strides to
consolidate the organisation. Several critical functions were
brought in-house, including Olympic Games Knowledge
Services SA and Meridian Management SA (since renamed
IOC Television and Marketing Services SA), which now
manages all Olympic broadcast rights, commercial and
marketing activities. The Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games
were the first for IOC Television and Marketing Services.
In addition, the IOC administration assumed responsibility
for the host broadcast function at the Olympic Games. By
creating Olympic Broadcasting Services SA (OBS), the IOC
is better positioned to ensure the quality of the Olympic
Games broadcast and control the image of the Games. For
the 2008 Olympic Games, OBS and the Beijing Organising
Committee established a joint venture, the Beijing Olympic
Broadcasting Co., to serve as the entity responsible for
providing international TV and radio signals to
broadcasters, managing the National Broadcast Centre
and providing all related services for the rights-holding
broadcasters during the Games. Beginning with the
Vancouver Games in 2010, OBS will serve as the sole
and permanent host broadcast organisation.
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SERVICE
In 2005, the IOC administration set out to ensure that it was
offering appropriate levels of service to its stakeholders.
Armed with an assessment of its existing service portfolio
and resource allocation, the administration improved and
formalised the services it offered to its various partners.
It clarified the interaction between departments and
determined roles and responsibilities in cross-functional
areas such as legacy management, brand protection and
broadcaster relations. And it re-allocated resources to better
meet the service demands of its “customers”.
As part of this service-improvement programme—known as
“Building on Olympic strength to transition to a state-of-theart
organisation” or, more commonly, BOOST—several
departments were reorganised and, in some cases,
merged. Support processes across a number of areas—
human resources, finance, logistics, information
management and technology, amongst others—were
centralised. This helped to minimise barriers that existed
between departments and enabled the delivery of
integrated, end-to-end services for clients.
COLLABORATION
The IOC administration encouraged teamwork in the
organisation in a number of ways, including through senior
manager seminars that allowed professionals from different
operational areas to learn from and share best practices
with their colleagues.
The administration further enhanced collaboration by
implementing a new information technology strategy, which
introduced new systems and improved efficiencies in key
areas such as data management, communications and
Olympic Museum operations. For example, the organisation
upgraded its enterprise resource planning system to
improve the quality and visibility of the IOC’s financial
information. And for external stakeholders, www.olympic.org
was redesigned, as were various tools such as the media
database, general public request management system, job
vacancy management system and the Olympic Museum’s
ticketing and reservation system.
The administration also spearheaded the 3Net programme,
which integrated all of the IOC’s Internet-based assets,
including the olympic.org website, the intranet, and a host
of collaborative extranets for NOCs, OCOGs and candidate
cities, marketing personnel and sponsors. As part of this
initiative, a new extranet was designed and implemented in
support of the 2009 Congress. For the first time, the public
was invited to contribute suggestions and insights for this
important gathering via a purpose-built site.
Finally, to ease information access and retrieval, the
administration continued to develop the Records, Archive
and Information Management (RAIM) programme. This
programme not only introduced new document
management practices and systems to store and manage
critical electronic records, but also fostered internal
collaboration and information sharing. The IOC ended the
quadrennium with more than one million digital documents
stored on the information management system.
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