How All-Ireland Champions use Kairos 📱
Our latest case study explores the importance of using Kairos in the county setup for recent All-Ireland Champions, Kerry GAA.
GAA players are familiar with the grit, resilience and discipline required from the sport. Those who have the privilege of playing club and county know all too well what is needed to keep themselves, their teammates and management on top of things. Skills like time management, leadership and the ability to prioritise in relation to their teams longer term goals are all critical to sustaining a high performing team. Indeed, given the sheer depth of the county panel and management staff, focusing on these elements can become complicated.
Kerry GAA recognised a need to align the long-term goals of their athletes, management and staff in a way that would build them up for success. Through rolling out the Kairos platform, the All-Ireland team began improving their smaller moments, day by day, that would contribute to those longer term wins as a unit. Consolidating the everyday necessities of the team meant the security of knowing session details, location updates,appointment times, files and important messages all had their own place, at the right time for athletes.
Time is precious in the GAA, often with a short turnaround period. With club and county teams demanding discipline, commitment and resilience from athletes. Typically, they’ll not only juggle their sporting commitments but their professional and family ones too.
For Kerry, it was important to eradicate pain points for their athletes by streamlining communications, ensuring they maintain a positive relationship with the team and long-term goals.
Through rolling out Kairos across the senior panel, miscommunication has been minimised. Players have the confidence that important information is shared safely and securely, having the confidence to refer back to the Kairos app saves significant time and effort for athletes.
It simplifies the small moments in the ‘behind the scenes’ of successful teams that you don’t often realise can take up the most time.
Seán O’Shea commented, “Kairos has definitely allowed us to level up as a team. Sometimes, the thought of trying to navigate my way through a WhatsApp chat for the sake of one fixtures list or training schedule feels like a lot. Using the platform effectively means everything we need as athletes has its own home with the ability to keep track of any last minute changes.”
While Paul Geaney noted the accountability the platform brings to the county system, “There’s definitely an added layer of accountability because if you’re using the platform effectively with your teammates and coaches, you’re reaping the rewards when you arrive at training or matches and everyone’s on the same page.
The app itself is clean and minimal, meaning it’s easy to navigate, it doesn’t feel like a drag to go on and locate any kick-out documents we might need, or even find out when the next set of physio sessions are.”
Paddy Tally contributed, “As a coach, you can spend a lot of time sending out messages, asking for responses to certain sessions or events, and even just checking-in with players or certain groups, say defence, midfield and your attack. With Kairos, everything’s there for me, and, instead of scrolling trying to find documents I’ve already sent to redistribute to members, I can actually just pin the relevant files so I, and anyone else who might need to, can easily access them.
Having a platform that encourages our staff and athletes to collaborate so seamlessly is another confidence boost when the time comes to take the pitch.”
Head of Athletic Performance, Jason McGahan agreed, “What’s great about Kairos is that the platform adapts to the demands of your team. You really get the sense it’s built for an elite sport environment – it is so easily adapted to consider any last minute changes to schedules. All the elements are covered: location and facility management, real-time updates for users on their mobile or desktop and the necessary reminders for players ahead of an important match. Its agility and efficiency are what make it so compatible with our program.”
We look forward to supporting the Kerry squad throughout the next season and wish all staff and athletes the best of luck.
3 elements that make Kairos more effective than WhatsApp for elite sports
The rapid evolution of sports technology over the last decade has seen a new era of accessibility for teams at amateur levels right through to international champions. This revolution has ushered in GPS tracking, dietary monitoring, every kind of data gathering you can imagine. In fact, the abundance of data available can often be overwhelming.
Communicating effectively is crucial in elite performance environments. One app that has occupied the forefront of instant messaging for 13 years now is Whatsapp. However, it just wasn’t built for the demands and nuances experienced daily in elite sport.
More and more teams are moving away from tools that are unfit for purpose, to tools that are designed to enhance communication in those key moments leading to game-day.
Check out why we think Kairos delivers that much needed extra edge below!
- Professional 💻
Built from the experience of professional athletes, our platform is designed and built for elite sport. It’s not a platform that has useful features for sport, it’s a platform where every element was designed to support an efficient high performance environment. Every team that uses the platform can adapt it, making it completely unique to them and their goals.
The platform exists as the day-to-day single interface between staff and players. Every message that’s sent means it gets where it’s meant to go, and only there. Staff can also manage quantitative and qualitative surveys, store and share critical files like videos and PDFs, set private appointments with players and manage personal information that’s accessible at the touch of a button.
The result? Everything staff and players need is in one place. A professional application means your club messages and data won’t be sitting alongside group or personal chats.
Your club platform, built for you.
- Privacy 🔒
We recognise that when using tools like WhatsApp, the ability to forward sensitive messages, videos or attachments to other contacts is all too easy. The lack of audit trail means that information is easily lost which can create fragmentation across teams, particularly when young people are involved.
A lack of control and oversight over who sees what, and who sends what to whom means that information is easily lost.
Kairos brings assurance.
We use encrypted cloud technology so all your information is secure and protected. Kairos is ISO 27001 certified, meaning that every possible action has been taken to make sure that the highest standards are met.
If necessary, you can track messages and have a clear audit trail of communication. You can even control who views, accesses or changes your documents helping your players and staff have one source of truth meaning those with academies or youth teams have greater ownership.
- Productivity 📈
Kairos grants the team selected admin full control over what matters. As a result, your operations are run by you, for you.
No more scrolling through various different groups to find critical information – everyone now has access to the information they need – and nothing else.
All departments can now collaborate on schedules, allowing the player to see their own personalised version…whether that’s from training to appearances, to booking treatment slots with the physio. Everything is in one place for the player. The Kairos platform allows you to change any plans made previously and can alert all relevant stakeholders instantly in the process – whether it’s ahead of time or real-time.
We understand that elite sport is characterized by decisive moments, high demand, and the need to be agile. Kairos is designed to help staff and athletes prepare for these moments by creating a unified communication and operations platform to enhance the preparation stages for players and staff – meaning a clearer, more confident and assured team – ready to perform.
To find out how other teams like English Premier League team, Brentford FC, have moved away from WhatsApp in favour of the Kairos platform, read more here 👉 https://bit.ly/3PNI217