On Friday, sponsorship at Eisbären Bremerhaven was still running on an Excel spreadsheet. Since Monday morning, the team has been working with Paktum. In between was a weekend up north that started with a joke.
Key takeaways
The basketball club Eisbären Bremerhaven and Paktum are starting a long-term partnership, still within the current 25/26 season.
Onboarding took 48 hours: Excel on Friday, Paktum on Monday morning.
Partners, rights and contracts are integrated, and the related processes have been discussed and put in place.
The idea came from a joke with Max Jorzyk the week before.
A joke with consequences
In the week before onboarding, we joked with Max Jorzyk of the Eisbären that Paktum could simply be introduced over a weekend. The joke turned into a plan, and the plan into a spontaneous trip up north.
“We had joked with Max that you could introduce Paktum over a weekend. That turned into a spontaneous trip to Bremerhaven, and by Monday morning Paktum was in use,” says Patrick Laux, founder and CEO of Paktum.
On Friday, it was far from certain that it would work. A weekend has no buffer. If you want to work with a new system on Monday, you have to stick to the essentials and make decisions quickly.
What happened in those 48 hours
We focused on what the team needs in its daily work from Monday onwards:
Partners: We integrated the partners from the Excel spreadsheet into Paktum.
Rights: The club's rights are recorded in Paktum and assigned to the partners.
Contracts: The contracts sit in the system in a structured way, with their terms and deadlines.
Processes: We discussed the sponsorship workflows together and put them in place in Paktum straight away.
Bremerhaven by night: In between, we explored the city's nightlife.
In the stands: And of course we cheered on the Eisbären on their way towards promotion.
For us, the last two points belong to the onboarding just as much as the first four. A weekend onboarding works because people also get to know each other away from the screen.
Can it really be done that fast?
Onboarding in 48 hours is not a standard we promise every club. How long a switch takes depends mainly on where the data lives and how many people are involved. In Bremerhaven, the starting point was one Excel spreadsheet, and everyone involved wanted to make the switch over the weekend.
If you are about to move away from Excel yourself, our post Sponsorship management instead of Excel walks you through it in six steps.
What becomes possible after Monday
With partners, rights and contracts in one place, the foundation is laid. In Paktum, you can build on it step by step:
Inventory with allocations: available and sold deliverables per season, with protection against double bookings
Deadlines in view: notice periods and automatic renewals show up in time instead of getting lost in a cell
Invoices on schedule: instalments, season invoices and extra services are created automatically when they fall due
Controlling: forecasts and a backlog curve show which revenue per season is secured by contract
Which of these functions the Eisbären tackle next is up to the team, at its own pace.
Your weekend, your spreadsheet
We keep our fingers crossed for Eisbären Bremerhaven on their way towards promotion. And to Max: thank you for taking the joke seriously.
Is your sponsorship still sitting in an Excel spreadsheet? Book a demo with Paktum. Whether your switch could also fit into a weekend is something we will find out in the first conversation.