Andrew Trimble, Kairos CEO, expands on why joining forces with Teamworks accelerates innovation for pro customers globally.

It is with great pleasure and excitement that myself and Gareth share some news with you today. We are delighted to inform you that Kairos has been acquired by Teamworks, the renowned leader in the sports industry.

As an international rugby player, I was always fascinated by ways that I could improve my offering for the teams that I represented. One of the most significant issues I encountered was the distraction caused by multiple WhatsApp groups, emails, and whiteboard appointments. I was always concerned that I’d missed some vital piece of information! 

High-performance athletes are spikey! They’re very good and passionate about one thing and that’s performing! So…. let’s find a way to allow them to just worry about the game at the weekend!!

While we’re at it, let’s allow staff and coaches to deliver key information and updates to players in an efficient way and give them the assurance the information has been engaged with.

A compelling thesis behind Kairos was established, and Gareth and I went to work building the solution.

When we launched Kairos to the English football market in 2021, we quickly began working with some of the biggest sports brands. We discovered additional intangible benefits Kairos users were experiencing, including increased accountability and an improved team culture. We continued to iterate the product at pace with an amazing team Headquartered out of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Our whole team became experts at intimately understanding the environments of pro teams.

Although we didn’t realize it, from 2021 onwards, Kairos was already partnering with Teamworks. We were collectively informing pro sports teams worldwide that a dedicated communication solution was a ‘must have’ to harness high performance. Together, Kairos and Teamworks now work with the vast majority of teams in the most significant leagues in the world, learning together as the needs of teams constantly evolve.

The acquisition by Teamworks is a very exciting opportunity to join forces with one of the biggest companies in sports tech and ultimately impact the offering to benefit the broader market. Joining forces with Teamworks will open up unparalleled opportunities for growth, innovation, and more overall impact. Their extensive knowledge and strong industry presence will empower us to amplify further the value we deliver to our customers and partners. Together, we will continue shaping the future of sports technology and revolutionize the way professional sports teams operate. 

We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you for your constant support, loyalty, and partnership. We are immensely excited about this acquisition and its possibilities for our collective future.

We would say one thing to our team and customers. We have built a strong product and company, and now, we look forward to leveraging our combined strengths to achieve even greater heights. Fasten your seatbelts – we’re not leaving the theme park – we’re building a bigger rollercoaster!!

One of the most exciting elements about joining Teamworks is the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with the brilliant people at the company. The big question is, ‘What’s next for the Operating System for elite sports?’ Having looked behind the scenes and discussed Teamworks plans for the future, it’s a future we want to be part of and feel with myself, Gareth, and the team at Kairos in the mix, we can make it even more exciting!

Thank you, and let’s embrace this next chapter together!

Andrew

Teamworks Acquires Kairos

Teamworks Acquires Kairos

Teamworks’ acquisition of Kairos represents a significant investment in the Professional Sports market. 

DURHAM, NC – [January 17, 2024] – Teamworks, an enterprise SaaS company serving elite sports and tactical organisations globally, has announced the acquisition of Kairos, a communication and messaging software for professional sports. This acquisition is the next step in Teamworks’ journey to transform sports technology and represents a significant investment in the professional space.

Each company has made an indelible mark on the operations of professional sports organisations. Teamworks currently works with 200 pro organisations around the globe, having entered the market more than a decade ago. In the past three years, Kairos has built an extensive customer roster of over 100 organisations, primarily in global football and rugby.

The vision for The Operating System for Sports™ remains the same. Together, Teamworks and Kairos plan to create a unified and enhanced experience by incorporating the best of Kairos into the Hub product, and continuing to integrate the full suite of best-in-class tools within the Teamworks Operating System.

“When we set out to revolutionise sport through technology, we knew we couldn’t do it alone. We’ve acquired companies with visionary leaders and like-minded individuals to help us build the future of sports. Kairos is the next great company to join us on this mission.” said Zach Maurides, Founder and CEO of Teamworks. “With our combined expertise, additional resources, and a unified strategy, we’ll accelerate innovation and our development of an integrated operating system for elite sports organisations.”

As part of this acquisition, Teamworks welcomed twenty new Kairos employees who will focus on product innovation specifically for the professional sports market. Teamworks is also excited to welcome Kairos founders Andrew Trimble and Gareth Quinn. Trimble’s distinguished rugby union career includes representing Ireland internationally for more than ten years and whose proven approach to empowering holistic sports performance will help guide future product development for the pro sports market.

“The decision to join Teamworks is a strategic move to align ourselves with the leader in sports technology, and one that shares our vision,” said Trimble. “Teamworks’ comprehensive operating system allows us to continue building and innovating for our pro sports customers on a solid and integrated foundation. It also allows our customers to adopt new purpose-built products faster within a unified platform.”

Teamworks’ footprint within the professional space now includes 300+ organisations across 15+ countries. Most notably, 91% of NFL, 85% of English Premier League, 83% of NBA, and 80% of top-ranked Men’s National Rugby teams use at least one of Teamworks’ 12 products. 

About Teamworks

Teamworks is the proven operating system for high performance, powering more than 6,000 sports, military, and public safety organisations worldwide. Available on a centralised, integrated platform, the Teamworks’ product suite provides specialised applications to support recruiting, development, management, individual branding, and community building. Based in Durham, North Carolina and founded in 2004, Teamworks continues to expand its global presence with employees across eleven countries. Visit teamworks.com to learn more.

About Kairos

Kairos is a Team Operations & Communication system, trusted by elite teams worldwide. This comprehensive platform seamlessly integrates team planning, daily communication, and player management, streamlining essential functions into one centralised system. Visit Kairostech.io to learn more.

Kairos Year Review: 365 Days Spent Powering the Team Operations & Communication of Elite Teams Globally

Kairos Year Review

In 2023, our mission to revolutionise the world of Team Operations and Communication was inspired by helping elite teams secure wins and achieve success day in, day out. With a primary emphasis on innovation and fostering alignment, our goal to empower athletes and staff globally through Kairos came to fruition.  

Take a look at our year 👇

Need for Speed… 💨

This year, we added two new data storage hubs to our system. One in North America and the other in Australia. The impact? Our users, particularly those in the US and Canada gained a significant increase in upload and download speeds. While it improved the speed of the overall platform, file attachment speed in our messenger feature was recognisably the biggest change.

Big Time Champs 🏆

For the first time, we had Ryder Cup Champions and Rugby World Cup Champions who were actively using the Kairos system at the same time…but that’s not all.

Surrey County Cricket became back-to-back County Champions, the New England Free Jacks secured their First Major League Rugby Championship title, Dublin GAA won the 2023 All-Ireland Gaelic Football Final, Aston Villa FC secured European Football, Newcastle United secured Champions League Football, and both Luton Town and Sheffield United achieved promotion to the Premier League. These are just some of the highlights of the many achievements our users made across 2023!

New Features 🎁

Notably, we brought some new features into the mix this year:

• Read Receipts and Last User Active Status
• Travel Allocations
• Kairos TV 
• Single Sign On

While we added 20+ new features, we continued to upgrade the main pillars of Kairos: our schedule, survey, messenger and travel features so that they continued to evolve with our users’ needs.

New Product, More Focus Time 🤝

In 2023, we launched Kairos TV. 

A new product built with elite teams in mind. With Kairos TV, staff can create unlimited screens capable of hosting different content on each and connect them in seconds with QR scanning. 

Anytime, anywhere 🖥️

Time Well Spent 🤭

We haven’t quite created a feature to go back in time, but we know for a fact that we save over 75% of our staff users globally over 100 hours of time per year… that’s at least 2 hours per staff member per week!

What does this mean?
Operations staff have more personal time, time to catch up on a TV series or check-in with family and friends and more professional time to focus on the things that really matter. We know how operations staff have a huge responsibility and are expected to have all the answers for all stakeholders in their club or team. With Kairos, they are guaranteed to have one source of truth to support them throughout the busiest of times, removing the need for many of the questions they are met with each day…

On the Road 🚘

Some of our favourite memories this year however consisted of being out and about.

We had the pleasure of headline sponsoring Training Ground Guru Live and Leaders In Sports: Performance Summits.

Attending the NBA Summer League Expo and Major League Baseball Winter meetings were high on our list too.

Throughout it all, our customer success team were busy visiting users at their training grounds. Ensuring all users are optimizing how they use Kairos, and that our system is working effectively for those individuals and their club. 66 new logos joined our system this year, with over 140 teams aligning their Team Operations & Communications through Kairos.

This wouldn’t be possible without our Customer Success team who provided around the clock support for customers and increased our team’s presence in key regions. Our incredible team worked alongside engineers to ensure quick closure of all raised tickets.

Thank YOU

Last but not least, we want to thank those who continue to support, contribute to and shout about Kairos. We value the feedback, the encouragement and look forward to reaching new heights in 2024.

At our core, we value simplicity and making things easier for ourselves and those we work with.

We can’t wait to ramp things up in 2024, be sure to join for the journey. 

Guild Esports to use Kairos Moving Forward

How can a Communications and Operations app add value to a global eSports brand?

In an effort to consolidate the loyalty and staying power of eSports enthusiasts worldwide, Guild
recognised the need to improve and professionalise the communication and operation
processes that impact their athletes on a day-to-day basis.

The opportunity presented to Kairos was to add value to a sport that operates globally,
competitively and that has very high demands of digital interfaces by the nature and
demographic of its users. With traditional sporting establishments looking to eSport
organisations and their operation models to leverage sponsorship opportunities, athlete
performance, fan experience and engagement – it seemed a natural fit that our leading
communications and operations app would enhance the communication and operations
processes of Guild Esports..

“In every frontier of the sports industry, there’s a huge amount of background noise and clutter
to wade through. We recognise Kairos as an app that cuts through that, our athletes have their
daily, weekly and monthly schedules at their fingertips and know what’s expected of them!
Kairos has enabled us to professionalize how we run our teams to maximize performance and
success” Matthew Charles, Director of Operations, Guild Esports.

Gareth Quinn, COO at Kairos commented, “When Kairos was founded we had never intended
to sell into eSports, an industry which was still very embryonic in its development. We did
however want to build a platform which was sport, and more importantly, culture agnostic. We
are proud that Kairos can offer significant value to eSports teams and we are thrilled to be
working with the teams at Guild Esports, our very first eSports team.”

If your team is interested in learning more about Kairos, schedule a quick demo today!

How Kairos Helps Teams Competing in Major Tournaments

The Rugby World Cup is set to take place in France from 8 September through to 28 October 2023. Falling on a year where the sport will celebrate 200 years since the initial inception of the game, teams around the world are well into crucial preparations. With 48 matches to be played across 51 days in different locations: nailing the team management, operations and communications elements has never been more important. Operations staff globally are under a growing amount of pressure and Kairos has the proven tools to relieve the biggest pain points experienced during these often draining campaigns.

With World Cup squads like South Africa and Australia using Kairos already, we explored the compatibility of Kairos at three key stages of the tournament:

1. Pre-Tournament Planning & Preparation

Organising logistics, accommodation, training facilities and transportation can be a daunting task. Kairos provides a comprehensive event and travel management platform that streamlines the process for the key staff involved.

With club seasons now finished, players involved in a club and a national squad both using Kairos will enjoy the ease of navigating between their two accounts on the Kairos app. While players will be coming together from all over the world, the travel feature ensures everyone is fully up to speed on travel plans, and is in the right place, at the right time. Staff can allocate bus, train, or flight seats, along with hotel room numbers, tickets or boarding passes to individual players – saving staff from back and forth messaging on platforms such as WhatsApp.

Next up is data collection ahead of the tournament. Staff can send out information requests ahead of time whether to be stored within individual athlete profiles or perhaps more generally through our survey feature. Gathering and storing information such as dietary requirements, kit sizes, wellbeing surveys or even ticket requests are easily managed meaning less headaches for staff and athletes alike. For the more private elements, our bespoke permissions ensure that only individuals can see the chosen information, maintaining confidentiality throughout. No need to worry if those documents need to be signed, that’s where our simplistic e-signatures feature helps speed up the granular processes with players being able to review and sign documents from their mobile device.

Hearing directly from a great of the game who has first hand experience using Kairos, Rassie Erasmus, South Africa Rugby’s Director of Rugby said, “The Kairos app has been a revelation for the Springboks, and has become a vital tool in our planning and preparation for test matches…

It’s an effective tool for any sporting team in their quest for excellence, and as SA Rugby’s Director or Rugby, I highly recommend this app to all sporting teams”.

2. Tournament Communication & Operations

While the more granular logistics are left with the event organisers, Kairos simplifies  training sessions, preparation phases and game-day by showing athletes key timings, starting lineups, game files or videos. The Kairos calendar becomes essential in the ever-changing world of elite sport – through scheduling live changes, updating team events, sharing individual player information such as media requirements and treatment allocations – allowing the player to have one single source of information. Gone are the days of creating PDFs that are constantly changing throughout the day or the need to rely on SMS messages to notify athletes of changes. Kairos takes care of the granular details, allowing athletes to focus on their performance. 

Our favourite features for this stage of the tournament are: Kairos schedule, messenger, Kairos TV and facility management.

Kairos TV is a revolutionary new product which allows teams to show schedule information, announcements, messaging and both video and imagery on the screens within their training ground, stadium or hotel. While Kairos TV will not be officially launched until later this month as we catch up with demand from current customers, do feel free to get in touch to explore how it might work for you.

3. Post Tournament Feedback & Evaluation

After the winners are crowned, it’s time to consolidate all learnings from the tournament…the good, the bad and the ugly. 

Kairos facilitates the feedback and evaluation phase through file sharing, messenger and surveys. 

That’s not forgetting the journey home where the travel feature will play a key role in returning players safely to family and club teams. 

We understand implementing a new piece of technology can be a daunting task when athletes and colleagues are relying on the immediate success of the implementation. Often, there’s a lot at stake when implementing an innovative yet simple solution  to replace traditional processes and ways of working. Kairos has been built intuitively to allow for streamlined onboarding, tailored for each team based on their nuances needs. Ben Golling’s, Fiji 7s Coach reflected on his experience with Kairos, “I’m really enjoying Kairos. It’s the first bit of software I can operate with ease and without needing a huge user manual and non-stop support. It’s similar to Apple’s idea of plug and play technology.”

If, like world class rugby teams, using Kairos is of interest to operate and communicate effectively throughout your next tournament, season or campaign, get in touch to schedule a demo today. 

Good luck to all teams competing!

Equestrian Sports NZ consolidate operations with Kairos

Equestrian Sports New Zealand have chosen to implement Kairos into their high performance and pathway programs in what is a very exciting development for the organisation. Organisations like ESNZ face many logistical challenges with a dispersed athlete and staff group, both domestically and abroad, and a high level of logistical complexity. The opportunity to centralise their operations, communication and scheduling into one reliable platform has proven to be a great step for the athletes and staff alike.

Jock Paget, General Manager of High Performance at ESNZ commented, “Email is increasingly becoming a thing of the past and a slow way to communicate within a team. Having a centralised platform for comms and planning has streamlined our processes and removed the clutter for our athletes and staff. We wish we did this years ago.”

Liam Walker, Kairos representative in ANZ added, ‘It’s extremely exciting to be working with Equestrian Sports NZ. They have a very complex operation and have been extremely diligent in their reviewing of Kairos and what we can offer. It is great that Kairos is going to bring efficiency to their staff as well as clarity for their athletes in what is shaping as a very exciting few years ahead.’

Kairos is really excited to wor

Eredivisie Champions Choose Kairos as their Team Operations Provider

Feyenoord, one of the most established clubs in European Football have opted for Kairos as their team operations and communications provider. The first Dutch club to win both the European Cup and UEFA Cup, now boasts 16 league titles – including their first league title since 2017 which secured their place in next season’s Champions League.

Recent success inspired a reassessment of the club’s digital infrastructure as part of the continuation of their strategic plan, with the overall goal of enhancing interdepartmental operation processes within the club, alongside staff and player communication.

As a player-centered application dedicated to team operations, Kairos will enable all departments to communicate with players through streamlined scheduling, messaging, travel sections, and casting schedules to TV screens in real-time, ensuring everyone remains on the same page.

Frank Boer, Head of First Team Operations at Feyenoord commented: ‘Thanks to Kairos we’re able to communicate with our players and staff much more efficiently. By having all information in one, easy to manage place, we can now: share, update and protect information more securely.’

Commercial Director at Kairos, Conor Branson, added ‘We are delighted that, after a thorough due diligence process, Feyenoord has chosen Kairos as their team operations provider for the coming seasons.

Feyenoord are a huge brand within European football, and they are rightly receiving plaudits for their strategy both on and off the field. It was clear to see through the onboarding process the culture that flows through the club.

At Kairos, we believe in putting people first, and working with Frank, Matt, Raymond, Marieke, Sarith and the wider team has been a pleasure so far and we look forward to continuing those relationships over the next few seasons.’

Feyenoord are the latest European football powerhouse to join Kairos, following the likes of Manchester United, Liverpool, Newcastle United, Brighton & Hove Albion, Aston Villa, Brentford and many more football clubs using Kairos to streamline all aspects of team operations and communication.

Welcome to the family, Feyenoord.

Kairos in multi-language – more than just a box tick…

In 2022, we had a huge increase in the amount of teams globally switching from other providers and opting to use Kairos as their communications and operations platform. This encouraged our team to delve into the why behind the reasoning of some of the biggest brands in world sport, competing in leagues such as the English Premier League, the NBA, MLB and NHL, decided to explore and implement Kairos. We soon realized that apart from a modern and intuitive platform, language and localisation were important elements of building a culture of belonging, understanding and trust – all a huge factor in swaying those decision-makers to make the simple transition to Kairos. 

Teams are made up of athletes from different nations, cultures and traditions, and understandably, staff and management wanted to provide an authentic environment for athletes and staff to communicate in. An elite sports team allows for athletes to come under one roof and represent one establishment with rich history and core values, all while allowing those individuals to work towards one goal, collectively. For us, it was important that their communications & operations platform reflected that same level of versatility that would play a key role in an optimal performance environment.

Kairos allows teams to come together on the one app, whether it be in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch or German. Allowing Kairos users to benefit from the versatility of the app; wherever they are, whatever their goal.

As said by James Hume, “The art of communication is the language of leadership”. Through working in partnership with some of the biggest brands in elite sport and showing leadership in our field of expertise, we are providing a vital and continually evolving platform that allows for the effective facilitation of a culture of belonging, understanding and trust to drive high performance and success.

Leaders in Sport x Kairos: Where Strategy Meets Execution

We took some time to reflect on the key takeaways from our Masterclass at the Leaders in Sport Performance Summit! Check it out below 🔥

Yesterday, at the Leaders in Sport event in Twickenham we hosted a masterclass session engaging with some of the brightest minds across the sports industry in leading roles within their organisation.

Moderated by Kairos CEO Andrew Trimble, the discussion which aimed to tackle the implementation of strategic goals was led by Manchester United’s Head of Women’s Football, Polly Bancroft and Southampton FC’s Director of Football Operations, Matt Crocker..

Strategy has become a buzz word within the world of elite sport, with many staff becoming sceptical and disillusioned that another ‘strategy meeting’ will again lead to nothing. Our CEO Andrew Trimble with his experience of playing professional sport and now leading a global company posed to Polly and Matt that a strategy in its most simplest form is merely a plan that allows an organisation to overcome a significant challenge or harness a marked opportunity.

Agreeing, Matt Crocker simplified his view, stating that strategy is ‘a long-term action plan’ that needs to be measurable, actionable and achievable. The length of the long-term action plan is unique based on the organisation, but must be constantly performance reviewed to ensure progress is being measured. 

Reflecting from his time at The Football Association, Matt suggested that England’s national teams lacked a clear vision, travelling from tournament to tournament, hoping for the best result. During 2013, they refined their strategy under the slogan, ‘unite the game, inspire a nation’ with the long-term goal of winning the 2022 World Cup. Now that the 2022 World Cup is around the corner, the success of England’s Men’s National team has been unprecedented – achieving a World Cup Semi-Final in 2018, European Championship Final in 2021, and tournament success at junior levels. Similarly, the Women’s National Team are currently having the most successful period in history, winning the European Championships earlier this year. Resultantly, the FA’s decision to roll out the strategic plan back in 2013 saw a successful implementation of the EPPP amongst other methods which made it: measurable, actionable and achievable.

Manchester United’s newly appointed Head of Women’s Football, Polly Bancroft, stressed the importance of collaboration and communication. Polly mentioned the critical importance of ‘involving staff along the way’ which in turn, becomes vital for staff buy-in. Communicating the vision from senior management in a transparent way, throughout all stakeholders within the organisation is essential to achieving the desired outcome. ‘This includes the players, they need to feel part of the journey, so listening to them becomes essential to success’. Polly shared examples from her time at Brighton and Hove Albion. In one instance, they held a player council to listen to the player’s needs, and implemented things such as a flower meadow to become greener and more sustainable, amongst other wishes to make the players feel part of the club.

The recent women’s Euros success has certainly inspired a nation, with participation, viewership and attendee numbers at an all time high. Polly noted her hesitancy in drawing direct parallels with the men’s game, ‘it’s like comparing a 5-year start up to a 140 year establishment’, believing the strategy of the women’s game shouldn’t be to replicate the men’s game, but to evaluate and apply what’s necessary for the growth of women’s football. With the strategic vision running throughout every level of the club, Polly recognised that Manchester United can be a great voice for the women’s game. The ‘United way’ certainly has direction and an expectation that comes with the red print, but the women hope to be innovative when implementing the strategic goals over the coming years. Though early in her tenure, Polly is holding meetings with key stakeholders to evaluate the potential quick wins which can help everyone feel part of the journey.

Similarly, when returning to Southampton for his second stint, the board had presented the strategy to Matt as part of his recruitment process and Matt was tasked with creating the footballing implementation. After speaking with various stakeholders, he admitted he could feel the ‘strategy fatigue’ within the club. After presenting back his plan after 90 days, the short-term execution was simple; ‘action before strategy’, listen to people within the organisation and implement the quick wins. Including them in the club’s success and longer-term strategy could be outlined and worked towards, becoming part of the club culture. The leadership team can identify the ‘what’ and ‘why’ but it takes everybody to be onboard to achieve the ‘how’ reflected Matt. 

Every club has a unique identity, and there are certain negotiables and non-negotiables that must be protected with that identity to keep the culture consistent. Reflecting on the recent managerial hire at Southampton, Matt stressed the importance of two key factors when recruiting a new candidate: playing style and leadership style. The playing style had to match that desired by the Saints, this could be identified by various data points and analysis, however the leadership style was also a key factor. Through psychological profiling they were able to analyse insights, but the interview process was a key differentiator to assess if the candidate was the right fit. The leadership style is important to the club so the strategy can be successfully implemented, and the candidate will be given specific targets that are constantly reviewed to make sure the progress is on the right track.

Both Matt and Polly agreed communication plays an important role in the implementation phase. Everybody within the club needs to be on the same page and language needs to be clear and efficient. Simplicity is key, with clear and consistent messaging throughout the organisation being instrumental for people to feel part of the bigger picture. ‘Catch people doing it well’ Matt emphasised, look for the positives and be sure to highlight them within your organisation.

At Kairos, we work with elite clubs from a communication and operations perspective to ensure everybody within the organisation, both internal and external stakeholders, are part of the journey and ultimately drive performance on the pitch

To learn more about what we can do, please click here 👉 https://kairostech.io/talk-to-sales/

Kairos: La plateforme d’opération et communication pour les équipes sportives de haut niveau.

Désormais disponible en français et prêt à rendre de l’efficacité, de la clarté et précision à vos joueurs et votre club.

Découvrez comment Kairos peut transformer votre équipe. Planifiez un appel ou contactez notre responsable francais:

james.currie@kairostech.io

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