George Skiadas, head of economic planning and strategic partnerships at Panathinaikos A.C., recognizes the increasingly important role of sports club management platforms in modern sports, even though their value has yet to be fully recognized. This value is acknowledged in the development departments of Panathinaikos A.C, as well as the value of relying on customer management systems that enhance the experience of athletes, coaches, and all stakeholders.

Measurable sports value

For a sports organization that provides athletic services to athletes, especially children, with the involvement of their parents, it is particularly important to monitor the quality of its services from the members’ perspective. This is the first aspect we will analyze.

Furthermore, the sports organization needs to receive continuous feedback and data that will allow it to conclude the quality of the services provided. We always take into consideration that a dissatisfied customer will cost us more to replace than to retain, while a negative net promoter score will create a negative perception of our service that is difficult to manage.

Exploring quality in the world of sports service production, and given that we can measure whether a service is good or bad if it achieves its purpose, and if we reduce and minimize our mistakes, it becomes a competitive advantage. However, it should be noted that in services in general, and especially in the production of athletic services, mistakes and failures are not easily measurable.

Collaborating with myTeam has provided us with everything we needed to start our digital transformation! Now we can measure the quality of our service in diverse academies with multiple groups of children and coaches. With a youth management platform like myTeam, in the early developmental ages of athletes, parents and athletes themselves can have access to a training program application from home. This allows them to plan their week, month, and overall competitive season. They can also take all this feedback home, process it, and start trusting the work being done at the club even more, finding ways to improve the activities of their young athletes through the application. In short, while reducing unproductive interaction time with coaches and staff, we have simultaneously increased the quality time that parents and athletes engage with sports.

What’s especially important for us are the competitive teams, and in our digital transition, athletes can make the most of the mobile app to improve their practice, provide feedback to their coaching team, have a personalized plan, and create training programs at home. This will help them develop and make sports an even bigger part of their lives. By doing so, they will further connect with their sports activities, which is crucial, especially during adolescence.

The myTeam platform facilitates the professionalization of coaching

From the coach’s perspective, they can monitor the competitive activity of athletes, providing personalized advice and improving the planning of training sessions. This allows them to dedicate quality time to training program design and practical exercises. Through the application, coaches can track the progress of their teams and individual athletes separately. This streamlined process of proposing improvement exercises for each athlete is supported by the club, providing even better quality service. All these data are now available electronically, freeing coaches from the hassle of manual record-keeping and enabling them to focus on the essential task of training.

Moreover, a sports club management platform provides the organization or business with ready-to-manage data, allowing them to identify new opportunities, make corrective changes, and assess positive or negative aspects more easily. It also helps optimize a coach’s performance without compromising collaboration, identify indifferent athletes, and work with them to foster a stronger connection with their team. By leveraging the competitive data, the platform enables the creation of better-performing teams, enhancing the overall experience for athletes of all ages and categories within the club.

Essentially, it solves the challenging aspect faced by a sports service provider, which is collecting quality data on how they produce and distribute their services. Without this data, they would need someone dedicated solely to collecting it. The application collects the data for us, and we process it in the way we believe is most suitable, allowing us to stay competitive in the sports market.

Management of the most important resource

At Panathinaikos A.C., we have specialized resource management systems (ERPs) that give us a clear picture of the financial inflows and outflows. However, these systems do not provide us with the necessary insights to effectively manage our customer base, which is our most important asset. Therefore, our strategic focus is on increasing the retention rate and leveraging the most powerful promotional tool, which is “word of mouth”. In simple terms, our goal is to ensure that our athletes are satisfied and share their positive experiences with others, thus promoting us in the process.

In myTeam, we found the ideal tool to develop this plan. We can confidently say that after two years of collaboration, our financial situation has improved by avoiding the high expenses associated with advertising campaigns. This leads us to the conclusion that investing in acquiring new customers costs much more than investing in retaining our existing customers within our ecosystem for many years. Creating such a culture not only yields economic benefits but also ensures a stable revenue stream and consistent financial support throughout the competitive season.