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:
- 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”.
- 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.
- 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!
