Hat-Trick: How A Football Club Transformed Data Management Using Jira

The football club got rid of messy Excel spreadsheets by switching to Jira. Now, data is shared between two Jira projects, which makes it easy to control who can see what, cuts out manual updates, and keeps information accurate.

catworkx introduced a smarter system: two Jira projects, one for administrators and one for coaches. To keep everyone aligned, Backbone Issue Sync was brought in to share essential information between projects automatically. This simplified collaboration, streamlined club operations, and allowed the team to focus fully on the game.

Leading this innovation was Michael Bernhard, CEO of catworkx AG. Michael isn’t just a tech leader — he’s also a lifelong football fan with deep roots in the local club scene. After spending more than twenty years supporting and volunteering in the community, Michael and his team were genuinely invested in the club’s future. That passion fueled their drive to bring in trusted technology and help the club grow stronger, on and off the field.

The Challenge

Just imagine managing a football club with hundreds of players and members using only... Excel spreadsheets. For years, the club juggled massive spreadsheets packed with everything from personal details and payments to team assignments, making data management overwhelming and inefficient.

As the club expanded, managing all the data in Excel became increasingly difficult. Manual data entry led to mistakes, old information, and security concerns. Coaches, admins, and board members all needed different levels of access, but Excel couldn’t handle those needs. 

All that chaos — messy records, privacy worries, and long hours spent wrestling with spreadsheets — hit hardest at the end of the season. Coaches and admins found themselves buried under stacks of different lists, often staying late just to piece together a single, up-to-date view of the club.

The old Excel-based process brought significant challenges:

🚩Data was scattered and inconsistent, with each coach managing separate spreadsheets that rarely matched up.

🚩There was no way to control who could see sensitive details — coaches needed player info, but shouldn’t have access to financial or private data.

🚩Each season, administrators had to spend hours struggling with the massive manual workload of merging spreadsheets, creating even more work, and dealing with delays.

The Solution: Using Jira as a CRM

With support from catworkx, the club moved all member data into Jira, using tickets to manage each player’s information and transforming Jira into an effective CRM.

The next step was to address issues of access control and data privacy.

Administrators and board members needed full access to player details, including financial and personal information.

Coaches, on the other hand, only required access to contact data and player history.

At the same time, it was vital to keep the information up to date for everyone while ensuring the protection of confidential data.

To ensure this,  the club set up two separate Jira projects:

Synchronizing Projects Seamlessly with Backbone Issue Sync

Backbone Issue Sync for Jira automatically kept both projects up to date. Whenever a coach updated a player’s status, the changes were instantly reflected in the Master Project, and vice versa.

The Backbone Advantage:

No More Data Silos

Real-time syncing between Master and Coach projects keeps all data accurate and aligned. 

Along with Jira issues, comments, attachments, and workflows are synchronized between both projects for complete data consistency.

Member status changes — such as cancellations or updates — are automatically reflected in both projects through seamless workflow mapping, ensuring everyone always sees the latest information.

Why This Matters for Other Organizations

Any organization that needs secure, automated data syncing across multiple Jira projects can benefit from this approach. Below are some examples.

• Customer Support and Engineering

Updating tickets across JSM and Jira instances — whether between companies like Arvato Systems or  Jira to Jira behind firewalls, such as MIC GmbH.

• HR and Compliance

Managing employee information across separate Jira projects for HR and payroll.

• IT Asset Management

Synchronizing IT and Finance data across multiple Jira projects.

Secure Data Synchronization for a Winning Team

Switching from Excel to Jira with Backbone Issue Sync gave the football club stronger data security and smooth, efficient management.

The expertise of catworkx consultants ensured the implementation was seamless and the solution runs effortlessly.

This article was created in collaboration with K15, especially for catworkx. All copyrights are reserved.