Jiří Filip If you manage or have ever tried to manage even a small sports team, you will surely agree that it is not an easy task. I personally had the opportunity a few years ago to partially participate in the management of one such club - specifically the city floorball club - and although I had only two departments under me and a colleague, organizing everything as needed was definitely not easy - in fact, quite the opposite. In short, it can be said that there are many concerns regarding the management of the club or its part, and without a really high-quality plan, for example in the form of various electronic diaries, communicators and the like, you can hardly manage it. One very interesting solution facilitating the management of sports clubs and by extension other organizations is offered by the Czech company eos media s.r.o. It is specifically called eos club zone and since, in our opinion, this is a very interesting undertaking, I will try to bring it closer to you in the following lines.
A bit of theory
Before we start analyzing the entire platform, I will briefly explain its advantages. The creators describe eos club zone as effective online management and communication across club members, which will facilitate the functioning of the club in all directions, enable communication across its structures and, thanks to this, save work, time and money. As already mentioned above, the club zone can be used not only at sports clubs, but also at fitness centers and gyms, at interest groups, kindergartens or schools, and in fact in practically any other organization in which a comprehensive overview of its functioning is simply and well needed .
The use of eos club zone is not only beneficial for club management, but also for regular members or "ordinary" coaches. While the management has, for example, a quick overview of everything happening in the club, including keeping track of dates, a platform for collecting electronic applications or various confirmations (for example, about medical fitness) or solutions for GDPR and other administrative matters, regular members can find out about nominations for matches, for example , i.e. all information about them. But they can also solve excuses from training sessions or just communicate with the rest of the team/club via eos. And it is precisely the data from the excuses that are used by coaches to manage electronic attendance and perhaps even compose the lineup. In short and well, the options are incredibly numerous and the main weapon is that they are simply in one place.
Yes, I can, of course, keep a table of training attendance in Excel, I can post the report on the club's website or Facebook group, and communicate via the team group on Messenger or WhatsApp, but only if your club has very few members and you are able to somehow keep all important matters in the head. However, when things have to be dealt with on multiple fronts, I can say from my own experience that organizing everything as needed is extremely difficult, not because one cannot think of it, but rather because one gets lost in the mix x platforms on which they have to solve it and publish it. So the comprehensiveness of eos club zone is really great in this regard and to be honest I really like it. If I could use it even then, life would be easier.
Of course, using the platform is not free (activating the club section costs CZK 19 without VAT, adding a mobile application another CZK 000 without VAT, and from the 3000nd year you will pay monthly from CZK 2 without VAT (depending on the number of club members) for administration including all platform updates and customer support), so you can subscribe to a number of other things). On the other hand, I think that if the management is really serious about the club, these are not amounts that could not be paid from the club budget, which in most cases is supported by the city or the state in the form of subsidies, as well as membership contributions and sponsorship donations. which clubs have no shortage of.
Working with the platform
As you probably understood from the previous lines, the eos club zone platform is a very complex tool. I was even more surprised by its user-friendliness, which in my opinion is really great. At first glance, it is clear that the platform is created with an emphasis on simple control and overall ease of understanding for people at all levels of the club, which is absolutely key. After all, it is not only the management that is supposed to help, but also pupils, pupils at a very young age or the veteran section, in which retired people also appear in some sports. From the point of view of sports management, I would like to take a look at the entire platform in the following lines, as it is logically closest to me. In addition, we will primarily look at the web version, although it is also available Mobile application. It is intended for members so that they can communicate promptly and solve all their obligations quickly on the phone. The club management then manages and configures everything in the web version, which is also fully responsive on mobile devices.
Gallery
The use or, if you prefer, the control of the entire platform is based on the side drop-down menu, through which you can get to the individual sections of the platform. In my case of club management, it was specifically the sections Club wall, My teams and walls, Documents and files, E-applications, Nominations, Events, Contact the administrator and Official website. It is also possible to click on the current or past seasons, if, for example, something needs to be looked up.
The names of the individual sections speak for themselves. For example, the Club Wall works, as you might expect, more or less like a Facebook wall, so you can use it as a de facto public bulletin board to pin information that your club members should know. In addition to this wall option, there is of course also a team wall available, which is used for communication only at the level of the given team, which is definitely nice, as it significantly helps in the clarity of the entire platform. After all, the men's elite team probably wouldn't be too interested in the fact that the training of the pupils is exceptionally moved from Tuesday to Wednesday. In my opinion, a very useful gadget is the notification system for all new posts and replies in them, which uses both mail and notifications in the application on smartphones. So it is practically impossible for you to miss anything important.
In addition to team-based communication, the team wall also serves to easily find all important documents regarding the given team (both for the implementation team and management, as well as players), as well as to find the training schedule directly in the calendar, matches and nominations for them. But there is also a click on training attendance or, of course, a complete list together with the implementation team, through which any member can be easily contacted by phone or email, or deleted from the list or checked for member contributions and so on. Of course, not every user of the eos club zone has access to everything - for example, players are not allowed to view the status of payments and so on, as it would simply be of no use to them. I think that team walls and de facto team profiles are probably the most powerful weapon of the entire platform, as they can provide an almost unbelievably comprehensive view of the structure of the given team from absolutely all angles of its functioning. So I definitely have to praise the creator for the overall processing of this section.
The next section is Documents and Files, where you can expect to find all the documents, files, forms and similar things uploaded to the platform for club members. It can therefore be, for example, various registration forms or applications for competitions, but also information regarding health examinations, which the state is putting more and more emphasis on in amateur, semi-professional and professional competitions, and it is therefore certainly nice to be able to download everything you need from one place , what I need from the doctor. This is usually a health questionnaire put together by the management of the sport in question, which must be filled out by doctors and without which you simply cannot look at the field. Of course, this can also be solved via save it, Facebook walls and similar things, but if the document needs to be distributed among hundreds of people, the creation of one "download" place where absolutely everyone can find it and that is also very simple is simply pleasing. Of course, this section can only be managed by the club management, so you don't have to worry about team members uploading photos or similar nonsense to it. They won't be able to do it without the green light from the leadership.
E-applications are also a very useful section, which, in simple terms, serve to ascertain interest in various "extra" events - i.e. non-league tournaments, club training sessions and the like. Applications work similarly to events on Facebook, where you can add a lot of additional information to them, including capacity or price, and then you collect "Participate" for them. It's nice that each mini-event lights up quite prominently to indicate that you can still sign up, as interest is still being detected. A team member shouldn't miss it like that - that is, unless it's completely incompetent. I also have to praise the creators here for how they handled the payment system - or rather its clarity. The payment associated with the e-application is automatically generated for confirmed participants and they receive a notification, which is a very nice feature. Here, too, we can talk about a great simplification of the work for the club management, as the organization of accompanying activities is not at all a simple matter - in fact, on the contrary. I can say from my own experience that the organization of non-league "summer" floorball tournaments, which my friends and I enjoyed participating in in the past, was much more hell than going through the entire official season. Getting in touch with more people, agreeing on participation, price, accommodation and everything like that, ideally in a reasonable time frame, was really not very successful, and I honestly believe that this is the case with 99% of smaller clubs, where the game is so to speak sausage and beer. For larger clubs, this is of course "just" another great clarification of an otherwise well-functioning structure.
The penultimate, very important section is Nominations, where you get quick access to your teams' nominations for individual matches. Of course, members will have access to only those nominations that directly concern them, while management will have all of them. Here you can find both upcoming nominations for events, as well as completed or ongoing ones. It's nice that, in addition to finding out whether the coach plans to use me, you can also very easily click through to the details of the given event - that is, usually the match - from this section. You will know immediately where and when the game is being played, so what time you will leave and what time you will return home. Of course, everything can be commented, as in all previous cases, which makes the overall organization of the match very simple and, above all, transparent.
Lastly, we have the hosting section which relates to hosting various events leading up to home games and the like. For these, it is always necessary to provide an organizing service in the form of recorders, ball feeders, goalpost straighteners, medical personnel and the like. And it is the organizing section that will make all these actions very clear and therefore simpler as a result, as it will provide the management with a comprehensive view of the organization in one place. For helping with the organization, members can then collect bonuses on their membership accounts, for which they can then be rewarded in some way according to the club's settings.
So how does it all work globally?
Although I believe that you have already fully understood the overall functioning of the platform from the previous lines, I will take the liberty of recapitulating it briefly. eos club zone is therefore a platform that connects entire clubs and associations across all categories and sections - that is, if needed. In general, it can be said that management is able to find practically anything quickly via the platform or to communicate with club members through a whole range of tools in the form of texts similar to Facebook posts, mini-events or various downloadable documents. Club members are then able to respond to these steps with comments, i.e. by expressing their participation in individual events. In addition, they have a great overview of everything important, which means that if the eos club zone is managed correctly, it cannot happen that they forget something. The same applies to club management and coaches, who have all important data about the teams and thus their individual members at their disposal, which they can analyze in various ways and then communicate with individual members if necessary – for example, due to payment delays or missing documents. So it shouldn't happen that something like this is released and then it becomes a big problem - because everything is still in plain sight. However, it is of course key to take into account the fact that for the platform to really work perfectly, the entire club must switch to it without exception, as this is the only way to ensure 100% information. However, in my opinion, this is not a problem considering that only an internet connection is enough to use the platform these days.
If I were to focus only on management as such, for him the platform offers an abundance of options for managing the membership base of the section he manages, including various data exports, records of all payments and the like. By the way, the payment system can be connected directly to electronic banking, thanks to which everything necessary is automatically matched in the system, and the management no longer has to search for anything according to variable symbols and the like. Of course, there are notifications for everything important - after all, as with the coach and members.
For club management, the creators of the platform of course provide support and the possibility of joint configuration, thanks to which each club can set the environment of its eos club zone exactly as it needs. The possibility to rely on the support of its operator during the initial setup and further use of the platform is certainly nice.
Summary
Right at the beginning of my final evaluation, I would like to emphasize that it is written by a person who has never had clubs with hundreds of members under him and probably never will. However, as someone who has tried to lead teams of less than a dozen members, I have to admit that a platform like this is absolutely perfect for these purposes, and I'm absolutely sure that if my former self could even pull the thorn out of the drunkard's heel with his leadership , for larger organizations it must be a godsend without exaggeration. You would hardly be looking for a more complex tool for managing an organization, which is also very clear and, thanks to that, usable by practically anyone. Of course, it makes no sense to lie to yourself that what eos club zone will provide you cannot be solved through the aforementioned Excels, Facebooks, Messengers and many others. However, while using these platforms you will solve even trivial matters for tens of minutes or hours, eos club zone will de facto do it for you in a few seconds thanks to its clarity. The club or team then learns about everything simply through a notification, which is something that also partially distinguishes the platform from other solutions. So the efficiency of your work will be really huge. Therefore, I would definitely not be afraid to give eos club zone a chance, because I am convinced that it can really take you a step further.
Learn more about the eos club zone platform here
tymuj.cz, which is free for now, is more than enough to organize a team
One team of course, I agree. But this is targeted for clubs with tens, hundreds or even thousands of members ;)
FAČR provides licenses for a similar SW XPS (www.sidelinesports.com) including a free mobile app. Similar functionality, for clubs in lower leagues, costs eos out of reality.
XPS is a great tool, but it is primarily intended for coaches, sports performance monitoring and training preparation. Simply for the sporting side of the club's functioning. In terms of functionality, eos is different – rather, it is focused on club management and organization with an overlap into marketing.