Technology in Sport: Is technology part of your team?
Sport has always been a part of my life —in fact, it was the main focus for a long time when I was pursued playing at the highest level of play in the team of field hockey back in the US. Throughout my professional career, the lessons learned on the field and with teammates carried with me as I progressed within companies and moved to new teams and industries. Those companies and teams I joined with other athletes gave me an immediate connection to their workflow and style to start succeeding together off the bat (ha, had to do it!).
When I joined the Clinked team, I was thrilled to find such a sporty crew! I quickly learned that sport is part of most of the team’s lives and continues to be — from surfing and skiing to football and hockey — we enjoy all aspects of sport and, particularly, the team component. This got me thinking about whether technology, which is what Clinked is, could be considered a teammate or a tool, like a football as it never gets tired, however, needs to be well cared for.
Either way, technology has become feature within most organisations. It is being used to facilitate the creation or delivery of services and products to the decisions of distributing valuable resources and monitoring activities amongst a team or client base. Needs around these processes are continuously evolving therefore creating opportunities for technologists to deliver increased automation to complete such tasks with less friction. All this allowing individuals and teams to move away from administrative based tasks towards creation and knowledge-oriented work of their roles.
“Any kind of job is going to have a digital component. It doesn’t mean everyone’s got to be a computer scientist”– Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
Back to sport (and sport pre-COVID) — Andy Murray has been a standout male tennis star reaching World No 1 ranking before a serious hip injury. He is back on the world stage at Wimbledon and featured in the Forbes article How Technology Helped Andy Murray Back To The Top As He Prepares For Wimbledon Return for the adoption of technology in his recovery programme. This technology Catapult Sports includes hardware worn during training and software analytics the team, including strength and conditioning coach Matt Little, use to monitor 360 impact of training. Catapult Product Specialist, Jozef Baker shared the following about this:
“What Matt has found from using the technology in tennis is that he is able to detect the effect playing on different surfaces has on the athlete. For example, playing on grass will have a different associated load to playing on hard courts and the same again for clay. This is also true of whether you are playing indoor or in open-air conditions. If you take that in isolation you can better control the load the athlete is exposed to through the season. Consistency of data regardless of monitoring environment allows users to monitor and control loading wherever the tour takes them.”
At the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2019 in France, technology has been a key member of the officiating team. VAR, video assistance referee, has been a top tool used by the FIFA Referees Committee throughout the tournament to provide fair and accurate review of play from all angles. In the semi-final game between the USA and England, a decision on a foul in the goal area went to VAR giving England an immense opportunity for a penalty kick in the final minutes of the second half. The use of the VAR at top international matches enables referees an opportunity to review an unclear event on the pitch from various vantage points to make a clearer decision. This technology on the pitch will continue to be a valuable tool for referees and teams coming into this weekend’s finals.
While we cannot all reach the heights of professional or international athletics, we can follow the lead of Andy or FIFA Women’s World Cup referees by using technology to increase transparency, collaboration, and deeper analytics around our “usual” activities within our teams and organisations. Potentially taking the friction out of the creation of analysis to enable streamlining workflows and productivity across a team.
Below are examples across various industries where teams are making technology part of their team delivery:
The product I work on today, Clinked is also an example of technology helping teams. The global client base, ranging from accountants and government agencies to financial service companies, use Clinked to boost client engagement and communication externally. It can also be a great addition within organisations and teams for client knowledge management and reducing time spent on related administrative processes. I like to think that Clinked is considered as great of an asset as a teammate.
Until next time, good luck to all those athletes out there — keep fit as you can these days and let me know if you’re using any technology to help meet future ambitions when we’re able to get playing again.
