Sports Management Software - The Benefits.

Sports Management is a very diverse, intricate area. There are many different sports, and levels of professionalism within each sport.

Nowadays, sports management is quite analogous to any business management. Perhaps this is due to the sums of money that can be involved, not just in professional but, amateur sports as well.

Sports management software systems can help to alleviate the problems inherent in sports managements in many ways.

- A sports management software can streamline the paperwork involved (as in any business) and heading towards the “paperless office” ideal. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paperless_office)

- The software can manage the human resources side of the organisation, whether that may be teams and employees or club membership.

- The use of software can help with advertising and ticket and merchasing sales (via mail-lists, etc.).

- Training support can also be found in sports management systems that can use more technology driven methods of delivering training to players, such as motion-capture systems to improve sporting form. (http://www.innsport.com/Sport.htm)

These benefits will lead to an increase in profitability in the professional sports arena as well as lowering the costs for amateur sporting organisations.

The more pervasive nature of Web 2.0 technologies takes this to a new level where management can have real time communication with the players and analyse data recieved during the sporting event to predict an events outcome and tailor their responses in accordance.

An example of this would be Formula 1 teams, where diagnostic systems monitor drivers and their vehicles. Statistical analysis programs then can predict and advise on when to pit, what tyres to use, and other myraid changes to the car and drivers approach during the length of a race.

Some organisations also monitor such things as the amount of TV viewers watching and tailor the “action” show and the ad breaks to their viewing audience.

This sort of control is still available to amateur organisations. With the use of Freeware and Shareware programs and mobile/wireless technologies an amateur organisation can enjoy similar benfits without the cost of a high end system. In fact its the decentralised and pervasive nature of Web 2.0 technologies that allows the amateur organisations to obtain the capabilites that previously where limited to the multi-million pound budgets of professional sporting organisations.

In fact, the benefits to an amateur organisation could be said to be proportionally greater than that to a professional organisation. This is due to the fact that many amateur organisations are mainly voluntary in nature. Here lowering cost overheads, amount of paperwork, and man-hours involved in the running of the organisation has a great positive impact on the organisation.

Risks or Negative issues involved in Sports Management Software

Sports Management Software

 

What are the risks or negative issues?

-Concept of ICT software platforms for sports management includes the need to generate revenue, provide enthusiasts with information, and provide management and grass-roots volunteers support with administration, cohesive governance and general good organisation.

-Online support for Sports Management software for small-scale users poor. Most available software is free and easy to set-up but lack of tutorials and hard-copy instructions for people unfamiliar with ICT, especially given the voluntary nature of clubs/societies in Universities, schools and communities.

-With the rise of commercialisation and globalisation governing bodies of sports and amateur societies are under pressure attain higher levels of coherence and governance (King Report 2002). This is a move away from ‘kitchen table’ committees, use of sports management software must be open and easily adaptable to this mentality.

-New need for transparency, accountability and work-flow systems which may not necessarily be engrained at levels of voluntary participation in sports management. Grass-roots participation in sports management traditionally not wholly compatible with business models, philosophies and methodologies. ICT Sports management systems must cater for the transition.

-Need for information and time management, communication and administration throughout implementation of new ICT Sport Management systems. Given the disparate nature of volunteers, training in these new methods is essential for cohesive management.

-Growing market, patents important especially with increase of open source software. Need to avoid legal issues like that of easyjet:

 http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2070891/software-developers-warned-legal-risks

-Availability of software and literature to enable ICT to communicate with fans, etc. This heavily out-weighs the availability of Sports Management software designed to ensure smooth and cohesive internal management of sports management bodies.

-Centralised and secure IT software platform is essential, one that is not short-lived. Overhaul of ICT platform every few years is a costly risk. The focus needs to be on the Sport Management rather than IT management, needs good managers to realise this, and given the voluntary grass-roots nature of Sports Management (5 million people in the UK alone) will they be adaptable to change?

-Not a lot of competition on the market at the moment for larger-scale business developers, variation of services likely to increase in future years. Difficult to break in to the market for new developers of management packages.

-Overall idea of centralisation and pro-active uptake of new ICT platforms is essential for reducing costs in all organisations. This idea is no less important for small scale bodies, councils or voluntary societies who need to break through the ‘pain barrier’ of adopting new technologies.

 

 

 

 

Tele-medicine an introduction

For an indepth information on how the dicipline of telemedicine can be applied, the following link to the telemedicine practical quide is invaluable.

http://www.telemedicine-europe.net/fileadmin/TELEMEDICINE/Documents/outputs/Pratical_20Guide_20Telemedicine_20Inhoud.pdf

Barack Obama even social network’s!

He has set up his own social networking site for all fundraising volunteers and staff

http://my.barackobama.com/page/user/login?successurl=L3BhZ2UvZGFzaGJvYXJkL3ByaXZhdGU=

Even potential Presidents blog!

Social Networking Business Model

In the most basic sense, a business model is the method of doing business by which a company can sustain itself — that is, generate revenue.

Social networking sites make their money in various ways. Online dating sites such as Udate and Match measure their revenues in 6 figures every month. Monster.com is profitable, in that companies pay to search for potential employees. The fact is that people pay for search when they want quality information.

Facebook still makes most of It’s money from targeted advertising… displaying relevant advertisements to users dependant on their interests. http://www.facebook.com/ads/

However as an additional income generator , you can now purchase “gifts” to send to your friends. This months featured gift is “Fresh Air” at 250,000 units for a price of $1. That’s a lot of one dollars, for something that doesn’t cost them a cent! Even worse there is many young and old that will fork out for this. I guess that’s how they generate at least a portion of their income.

Stanford University have actually created a module to teach students on how to create Facebook applications and how to analyse the information they collect from users. Its big business!

http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/10/facebook-to-take-over-stanford-classroom
Here is a video of Tom Anderson the founder of Myspace, talking about how myspace became successful. Its interesting when he describes initial marketing campaigns weren’t successful and word of mouth added most value to myspace.

Dave McClure in his blog - Master of 500 Hats, has posted an interesting Slideshare of the metrics and business models for a fictitious start up Scottish Pirates. Describing the process of acquiring new users right through to generating revenue.

The original social network game

This is where is gets a little crazy. Kevin Bacon of the six degrees of Kevin Bacon game fame (also an actor) has launched his own social network,

Funny skit on how facebook can “take over your life”

Found this on youtube and thought it funny!

I say Tomato you say COM917J2

Ha Ha, who changed the title to com917j2. Its not working we’re only third on google.

Guide to successfull blogging

I came across the following the article on msn which describes the seven deadly sins to blogging.

It claims they are;

1. Not blogging
2. Blog only when you have something to say
3. Having a meaningless post title
4. Not leaving comments for your friends
5. Don’t delete your comments
6. Don’t strive for perfection
7. Shameless self promotion

This may prove useful in doing our blog assignments. See the full article HERE.

Sticky Facebook

Its incredibly easy to join up to Facebook, but what about leaving it. Many users have experienced difficulty in removing all their details from the site, this can prove to be a long and laborious process. The following link is to an article from the New York Times describing in detail one almost ex-facebooker experiences and frustrations in trying to remove his presence from the site

click here for the full story