We recently caught up with Datacentreplus customer, Julian Dowe, CEO at Football4Football, one of Greater Manchester’s leading digital publishers, who shares his story on the creation, strategy and vision for Football4Football.
What is Football4Football?
Football4Football is a digital publication setup by Julian Dowe, a retired English professional footballer.
The digital platform is accessible to everyone in the game (from players, coaches, parents to fans) and provides an insight into real-life stories and advice from those in the professional game.
The platform consists of high-level research and is supported by experts, including past and present professional players, making the digital platform relevant to people with expert resource and advice. Its fundamental aim is to bring together all the components needed to play football, such as nutrition, equipment and coaching.
More than anything, Julian’s vision was to create a credible resource for anyone looking to learn more about football. He recognised the potential and utilised his existing network and connections within the game to create something very unique. This network consisted of Premier League and Champions League players, those who have played at the highest level of the game. Building upon his connections and growing his network, Football4Football now has more video content, featuring more players, more coaches and more experts talking about the game.
How long have you been a customer of Datacentreplus?
Football4Football have been a Datacentreplus client for over 6 months. This has been one of the most important periods for Football4Football in terms of them working with a partner who’s reliable, understands their organisation and delivers on their promise.
Why Datacentreplus?
Last year, Julian decided to re-evaluate his server hosting strategy following periods of server ‘downtime’ which created a lot of anxiety. Being a digital publisher, Football4Football wanted to form a relationship and work with a hosting provider who understood the importance of uptime, reliance, security and performance. As a data driven platform, Julian also knew the significance of having a platform that could be accessed securely and conveniently.
As part of the process of on boarding Football4Football, we had to carry out a complex migration of the existing site.
Julian commenting on the migration process said:
“Datacentreplus went above and beyond with our migration by keeping us fully informed at each stage of the process and engaging with our developers to keep downtime to a minimum. The tech team were first rate, whilst management dealt with everything seamlessly”.
What is the one thing we do better than others you do business with?
Julian advised that the high-level of service and communication were the key elements Datacentreplus excelled on in comparison to other hosting providers that Julian has used. Julian felt that if he ever had a technical enquiry it has been dealt with in an effective and efficient way by the support team. Julian also felt that the process was humanised rather than a generic response sent out via email; Julian could speak directly to a support team member to discuss any issues they felt they might be facing.
What is one thing that stands out to you about Datacentreplus?
Julian felt that we took the time to understand their organisation’s needs and provide them with a suitable solution that would meet and actually exceed their expectations.
In particular, he felt we understood the importance of Football4Football’s business strategy when it came to communicating with communities – “Datacentreplus made this a priority for us, ensuring all appropriate email communication was working correctly with the help and support of their technical team”.
For Julian, one of the most important features was having face-to-face contact with support and account management. This allowed Julian to quickly upscale and develop his platform and gave Julian confidence around technical capabilities, regardless of the development challenge.
What does the future of Football4Football look like?
“The future is looking very bright for Football4Football and we are delighted to be working with Datacentreplus. We are looking forward to providing one of the most forward thinking digital publications in the world of football with content that can benefit fans, coaches, parents and anyone with an interest in the game”.
