At first glance, an airport, a factory and a golf course may not have very much in common. But the team at FAIRWAYiQ is hoping to change that by using the analytical approach often seen in the first two examples to modernize the game of golf.
Co-Founders Dave Vanslette and James Nunn came together in 2015 to form the company with the idea that applied analytics could change golf, both for players and course owners. Drawing from their shared experiences in large scale operations management, Vanslette explained that they hoped to revolutionize the sport that has seen very, very little innovation outside of the equipment used to play the game.
“The idea behind this is that it’s very difficult to manage big open spaces where you have a lot of activity and a lot of movement without driving around – tantamount to trying to do air traffic control by line of sight,” Vanslette said. “When you have a lot of planes in the air, you need technology to manage that. Well, the same thing holds true for [on golf courses].”
To start improving operations on the golf course, they first needed to find out what was happening on the course. To do so, they developed a simple plan: “Let’s tag everything that moves.” And that’s what they did, deploying thousands of smart tags to players, flags, caddies, golf carts, maintenance teams and more.
As the data started to roll into the central gateway, trends began to emerge. Bottleneck holes, play speed variances and maintenance inefficiencies were quickly spotted. But presenting their findings as concise action items became more of a challenge.
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“The science can’t be too complex so that it scares people away,” said Vanslette. “We were conscious about design and exposing data to people. We want to expose things they can actually do things about, with recommended action. The insight has to be accompanied by an action or it’s really just good information.”
But the value of knowing where anything on the course is at any given time is just the beginning.
“This current view shows what’s happening right now,” Vanslette continued. “But, that’s not the real value here. It’s interesting and it’s good information to know what’s happening right now on the golf course but where the real power is is predictive analytics. Because we collect all the historical data, we can begin to develop patterns through our algorithms.”
Those patterns are the most valuable piece of information, both to course proprietors and golfers. Course operators can schedule tee times for parties based on skill and course conditions to ensure quick playthrough and fewer bottlenecks. They can even communicate with golfers to play through or allow a playthrough, all through the accompanying mobile apps or the smart tags themselves. The tags can also provide players with weather and course information. Effective management of maintenance, through task benchmarking and proactive work scheduling, helps ensure the best use of one of the most expensive contributors to course overhead.
On the other side of the spectrum, Vanslette says the use of the software can reduce on of the biggest barriers to entries for golfers.
“The number one reason people avoid taking up the game is because of the time element. This is one of the things, where we’re all digitally impacted in every other part of our lives, but you just have to show up and hope for the best when you get to the golf course .. but because we know how everything is running, because we’re influencing how things are running, we’re able to provide that visibility out to players.”
With the knowledge of how the course is playing and the pace of current parties, courses are now able to provide accurate estimates to players on the best times to play and how long they can expect a round to last. Vanslette said this is a huge differentiator that can get players, who might not be able to commit to the indefinite amount of time on the course, eager to tee off.
With the season drawing to a close, Vanslette reflected that it has been a year full of learning that has spurred plans to develop the next set of features of FAIRWAYiQ and to continue rolling out the technology to more and more facilities.
Both co-founders came from operations backgrounds working on major stadiums in the US and abroad, and agree that they may one day return to that sector. Per Vanslette, golf is a “first step to building smarter, more connected environments.” But for now, they’ve succeeded in bringing the operational methods of factories out onto the fairway.