The most modern and streamlined Sports Office system to date will improve overall usability and workflows across all areas of the system. We are soon to release a whole new and improved design in summer 2020. While there is an improved look to the system, the enhancements will benefit the user experience, with even further streamlined processes.

The new interface design also maximises the full-screen for improved data visualisation and delivery. The latest enhanced navigation across the system is faster and more intuitive for more efficient workflows and athlete management processes.

Soon, users will be able to define their favourite pages across the system to easily access their daily pages. The user experience will also be improved with greater search and filter functionality. This will be available across the system, which will aid their processes.

Before now, workflows had the capacity for improvement due to the ever-growing fast pace of the sport and the system needing to match. Software design can soon become outdated in the fast-paced environments, V3 eradicates these inconsistencies to working to the most streamlined system to date.

We’ve strived to solve this across our system by individually reviewing over 900 pages, seeking out usability improvements. We’ve analysed these and prioritised the most frequently visited pages during the enhancement process. By maximising full page width, reducing white space and have consistent icons, panels and options we have accomplished a uniform system for elite sports. The subtle design improvements will involve less scrolling and more workspace will keep users focused and ultimately improve efficiency.

For more information on the V3 Improvements, please contact us here!

The existing UEFA style injury audit report has been enhanced with improved functionality to aid the auditing of injuries across clubs and organisations.

The report has more interactivity for charts and tables and will be made available to all TSO Medical users.

Medical staff using this key area will find an improved live, interactive injury surveillance report which allows organisations to access the key/critical injury data including information including:

• the exposure
• injury
• injury type
• incidence 
• injury severity 
• location 
• Burden/Impact across all teams

The new report allows for single seasonal reporting or multi-season reporting when wanting to highlight or analyse any trends highlighted annually. These updates improve efficiency for the medical departments who want to quickly analyse varying injury types within their club over defined seasons.

At present, one of the major problems this solves is season-on-season comparisons that previously have been difficult to achieve accurately. The current report is restricted to clubs participating in the UEFA Injury Study, but now will be widely available to medical personnel across all systems. 

Until now, the club will have had to run the report for one team, before having to then change to another team, preventing team comparisons and seasonal comparison; which will soon be available instantly in one report. 

The Key Report Features:

The new report provides a live snapshot of their data and easy comparisons between seasons and also teams within a club/organisation. With key mappings of all orchard codes, this provides an in-depth report instantly. Also, we’re aiding analysis of the information with enhancements to the existing functionality to give greater flexibility on reporting to make season-on-season comparisons and team comparisons much easier through the use of additional filters and interactions with live charts and tables.

The report also includes a new visually appealing heatmap of data within the tables on the report. All users are able to have their personal preferences of data visualisation with the new various charting options.

The greatest impact of the easy to use reports will be providing this invaluable audit data, which will be ready instantly for analysis of varying injury types within their club over the defined season. 

This easy to use report provides invaluable data for the clients and sports organisations alike.

The Sports Office Client Managers Stephen Young and Dan Jackson have visited leading Kazakhstan Premier League club, FC Kairat. The Almaty based organisation are consistently strong performers and have challenged for their domestic title in the last five seasons.

FC Kairat has used The Sports Office performance management system for elite football, The Football Squad, for the past 12 months. This client visit was timed to coincide with their 2020 pre-season training.

The four-day visit successfully supported the club’s coaching, medical, sports science and also administration staff and the system was rolled-out across the club’s Academy structures. The Sports Office team also gave presentations on each area of the system. They highlighted methods for using it to further enhance daily performance workflows.

Stephen Young said, “The club visit went extremely well and it was great to see FC Kairat’s amazing training facilities.”

FC Kairat is able to use ‘The Football Squad’ in Russian language thanks to the site’s automatic translation technology. This allows clients to easily use our athlete management systems in their native tongue. Currently, our systems are available in Italian, Russian and Latin-Spanish.

The Sports Office will continue to support FC Kairat remotely through their designated client manager, our support desk and regular webinars.

The Kazakhstan Premier League begins again on March 7th 2020, when FC Kairat will face Taraz. They will continue to gain maximum benefit from ‘The Football Squad’ for Athlete Management.

The Sports Office’s Global Clientelle:

The Sports Office work with a range of high-profile organisations in the world of elite football. These include clubs in the English Premier League, Italy’s Serie A, the Australian A-League, North America’s MLS and the Kazakhstan Premier League. As well as working in elite football, we also support a wide range of elite sports organisations, federations and clubs.

For more information on The Sports Office Athlete Management Systems, please contact us here.

The Sports Office has added reigning Norwegian League Champions, Molde FK, to our roster of global football clients.

Molde won the 2019 Eliteserian and are four-time league and Norwegian Cup Champions. They will now use The Sports Office athlete management system for elite soccer.

Client Managers Carl Pomfret and Chris Tuson have visited the club’s Aker Stadion and training ground to deliver a full system implementation across the first team, academy and women’s teams.

Day One:

The Sports Office team met with key management personnel and staff from all departments, within the Molde club.

They were shown an overview of the coaching syllabus, session building, fixtures, and more to provide an in-depth overview of the system.

Sports Science staff including the physiotherapy and strength and conditioning team were guided through the system and shown The Sports Office App and The Monitoring App.

Molde’s Academy and first-team staff were also supported to begin using personalised player development programmes.

Day Two:

The club’s Coaching and Recruitment departments were given a re-cap on their key areas and began using system tools including drill diagrams and The Match Hub.

The first team and academy Medical staff also received a full medical overview and were shown key injury surveillance and reporting functions.

Day Three:

The Molde FK administration team received their overview of the system and focused on scheduling, player management and staff management.

Video and Analysis elements were also demonstrated. These included use of XML files, video uploads and analytics fed from The Sports Office App, to aid player development and review processes.

The Sports Office Key Client Manager Carl Pomfret commented: “Overall the visit went well and we look forward to continuing our work and providing support for the performance team at Molde FK.”

If your club or organisation could benefit from a support day to improve your use of our systems, contact your client manager now.

Also, for more information on The Sports Office Athlete Management System for elite football, get in touch here.

A new and improved version (V3) of The Sports Office performance management system will be released in 2020. This will offer a significantly enhanced user experience and provide a range of powerful, new functions. The new version of our system will offer even greater support for all athlete management processes and optimising performance in elite sport.

It will support seamless, collective working for each department in any organisation. The Sports Office V3 will be launched by the Summer of 2020.

Also, new features will be strategically released to enhance The Sports Office App. The App will soon include a newsfeed of the latest notifications for users. A newly created CMS system will allow clubs to share specific personalised content, and much more, to aid communication between club, staff, and users.

The Sports Office team are excited to bring these developments to our clients across all our multi-sport systems. We will keep users informed of the latest updates and enhancements.

Teaser video will soon be released for the first look at V3 of The Sports Office systems.

The excellence of The Sports Office in data security and quality management has once again been formally recognised.

Last month, the company achieved ISO 27001 re-certification. The standard was initially awarded in 2016 and the business has recently passed its three year re-certification audit through UKAS certified British Assessment Bureau.

The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 27001 certification is the globally recognised Information Security Standard. It specifies best practices and the constant improvement of an organisation’s Information Security Management System. Certification provides assurance to customers that the data they store within our systems is secure and that our systems have the capability to avoid and mitigate risks.

Craig Bailey, Director of Development stated, “We are really pleased to achieve re-certification on what has become the de-facto standard for Information Security. This certification continues to provide our customers with confidence that their data is protected by processes and technology conforming to best practice security standards.”

The Sports Office have these standards in place to provide the most secure system for athlete management. For more information, please contact us now.

A series of engagement days have been staged to support coaches’ use of the Premier League’s Performance Management Application (PMA) and assist all practitioners and clubs to gain the greatest possible benefit and value from the system. 

The PMA:

The PMA is the powerful IT platform which has been developed to support the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) and help academies to produce more and better homegrown players. 

Coach Engagement Days

Three separate days were staged in the North, the Midlands, and London. Club representatives including coaches, analysts, and fitness trainers attended the event nearest to them. They were also joined by representatives of our partners from EFL. The events were hosted by the Premier League, with education content delivered by The Sports Office team.

The Sports Office designed and built the PMA and provide ongoing support and servicing. Each day was broken-up to different elements which provided excellent insight and guidance for all users.  These included practical ‘how-to’ sessions about: 

• Coaching Session Management – how the PMA can enhance Planning, Reviewing and Reporting of coaching sessions.
• Fixture Management 
• PMA tools to support the Player Review Process  
• Custom reports – how best to use the PMA to create a wide range of custom reports 

The first event was held in Manchester, with guest speak Gavin Levey providing insight into Aberdeen FC’s Academy and match operations.

The following day Client Managers, Premier League staff and coaches gathered at Villa Park to hear insight and guidance on the system. Joe Lydon, Head of International Talent ID & Development for the Irish Rugby Union discussed his experience with ‘The Rugby Squad’ and on the parent/child relationship Irish Rugby adopts with its provincial teams and clubs. 

 

At the London-based engagement day, Inter Milan’s Head of Academy Roberto Niccolai and Southampton’s Academy Data insight Technician Ben Creswell each made presentations about their use of the system.

In Roberto Niccolai’s case, this related to Inter’s use of an entirely separate but comparable system, The Football Squad, which is also supplied to them by The Sports Office.

Andy Gorski commented, “These collaborative events are a great way for the coaches using the PMA to understand the many options for using and benefitting from the coaching program on the system.”

Support Available:

Excellent and user-friendly support for coaches, analysts, fitness trainers, and sports medicine staff is available from The Sports Office client team, on an ongoing basis. Our client managers can be consulted on the above areas and many other important aspects of maximising usage of the system. 

Get in touch with The Sports Office team now for any support or information on the athlete management systems for elite sport.

The MLS season is now over and we would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all our clients competing in North America’s flagship football League.

Following ‘our teams’ in 2019

The MLS play-offs featured several “TSO derby days”, with our client clubs meeting each other. Toronto FC won the Eastern Conference title. They battled it out against fellow TSO client Atlanta United and defeated them 2-1 in the final.

Toronto then moved on to the MLS Cup where they played Seattle Sounders. Toronto FC previously won the MLS Cup in 2017. On that occasion, they beat the Sounders 2-0, making them the first Canadian club to win this MLS trophy.

Unfortunately, history did not repeat itself this November as Sounders beat Toronto FC 3-1 to lift the trophy.

Our clients Atlanta United also performed well in the Campeones Cup, the annual clash between the MLS champions and Mexico’s Liga MX winners.

A fantastic MLS season has passed and we look forward to continuing our work with our clients and supporting them to optimise Athlete Management in elite football.

The Soccer Squad

Our performance management system for elite football, The Soccer Squad, provides a centralised system to collect, analyse and monitor athlete performance data. Many clubs within the MLS and Australasia’s A-League use The Soccer Squad. Many leading football Academies also use our systems, including every Premier League club, via the Elite Player Performance Plan.

For more information on the systems that support leading teams across the MLS, Premier League, A-League and more, then contact The Sports Office now.

The Sports Office has further enhanced its features which enables users to drive evidence-based, technical and physical improvements in their players and athletes.

This Benchmarking feature is a powerful data analytics function that harnesses the cloud computing nature of our systems. It allows users to compare performance metrics and physical characteristics. This can be within age groups and across a range of other desired categories. 

Comparing player performances can easily be completed in an unlimited number of physical and technical tests. These tests are customizable to benchmark athletes in any required field.

The Sports Office’s Andy Gorski commented: “We believe our benchmarking functionality is unrivaled. It offers elite sports teams and organizations a unique opportunity to gain powerful, game-changing insights.

“It gives them the opportunity to use robust evidence to drive and deliver technical and physical improvements in their players and athletes. We look forward to working with existing and new clients to help them gain the most from this powerful element to our systems.”

How it works:

Data for an Under 18s player could be compared or ‘benchmarked’ against every player that a club holds records for. Significantly, the benchmarking function allows for the normalization of data from various sources. This allows clubs to analyze a player’s testing, physical or performance data against several parameters, including cohort or maturity status.

One possible example of usage would be for a young player to complete a series of annual tests. Several of our current clients already use our growth and maturation measurements to benchmark players. Their results are used to compare to other mature players.

National Governing Bodies using The Sports Office with a ‘Parent/Child’ relationship can hugely benefit from benchmarking results against any other data.

Throughout long-term athlete development, staff can use the Benchmarking process to optimize progress and outcomes. This includes both junior development and performance structures, such as Academies and representative teams. The function can also enhance personalized athlete development plans.

The Benchmarking functionality is available within The Sports Office systems. To find out more about how your organization can benefit from Benchmarking, contact us now.