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Scout7 is one of the major suppliers of technology into professional football, with systems at over 100 clubs throughout Europe and more than 1,100 professional club staff accessing their club systems on a regular and often daily basis.
Uniquely the company deals with a broad range of football personnel throughout each club, ranging from chairmen, chief executives and administrators, through to managers, coaches, chief scouts and regional scouts.
As a result of working closely with such a broad number of clubs, including some with the largest scouting networks in world football and others operating on tight recruitment budgets, our technology has developed its own unique position within professional football, a club wide solution proactively used from the senior officials going down to part time regional scouts.
Our own philosophy of the role of our technology in 21st century player recruitment can be split into four specific areas:
A Solution to Support the Clubs Existing Scouting Structure
Ethics and Interaction
Transparency
For the Good of the Game
A Solution to Support the Clubs Existing Scouting Structure
In the majority of cases, a professional football clubs largest single financial outlay is their budget for recruiting new players, both at first team and at academy level.
We at Scout7 see the role of our various technologies and services as providing the tools to enable a club's existing recruitment structure to work with maximum efficiency.
To do this, our flagship ProScout7 solution enables a club to centralize the management of a their network of scouts, managing reports coming in on a daily basis effectively and keeping tabs on personal recommendations made by regional scouts and senior staff within the club.
The comprehensive information available through our ‘live' global database also enables users at each club to keep their finger on the pulse on developments occurring all over the world.
From domestic football in the key leagues in Europe to the leagues in developing regions including Asia and North Africa, the statistics on every player in the system allow senior staff at our clubs to monitor the progress of short, medium and long term targets.
It provides an indication of the ‘bigger picture' when analysing a player's history, from identifying long periods when a player has not featured for their club team, to trends such as the number of times a player fails to complete the full 90 minutes or the number of suspensions a player serves due to a poor disciplinary record.
This statistical data provided by Scout7's global database, supported by the objective player analysis produced by a clubs own trusted network of scouts, enables a recruitment department to eliminate potential risks in recruiting a player and ensure every single player brought into the club meets the criteria set out when the recruitment process began.
Ethics and Interaction
With approaching nearly 110 clubs around Europe, Scout7 recognizes the importance in confidentiality when carrying out extensive research on behalf of a client, in addition to providing accurate information on global football as a whole.
By providing objective information based on statistics and fact alone, data produced by Scout7's international team of researchers allow a club to make objective decisions without the interference or information provided by third parties (including player agents), who may not have the best interest of the club as their primary motive in providing information.
In all cases of collating and providing information, both through the global database and via tailored specialist research, Scout7 provides a comprehensive overview of a player being monitored and will ensure a club is in possession of the full facts before making any decision.
Through the ProScout7 technology, Scout7 also proactively encourages each user of the system to interact with the company's support and research team - for example within EVERY player record in the database, a user can directly contact Scout7 and request any information which they may not have been able to obtain within the system themselves.
This ensures that the user can obtain the particular information they require each time they log into their clubs ProScout7 system.
Transparency
As with all multi-international organisations, the importance for senior staff to monitor the work of its internal departments is of vital importance to ensure the various procedures and structures in place succeed.
In football, player recruitment is no different.
Scout7's technology allows the whole scouting process to be monitored with complete transparency.
For a Chief Scout, Technical Director or Sporting Director, the ProScout7 solution enables the club to manage the work of each regional scout both at home and abroad.
The system ensures all the scouts reports are managed and stored centrally within their own personal filing cabinet - allowing the senior staff to see which players and teams each scout has watched each season, how they have rated players and through their own personal recommendation page, see the players the scout personally thinks are suitable for the club.
The club can restrict a scout's access to the system so they only have access to their own work, which means their opinion cannot be influenced by those of other scouts employed by the club using the system.
This means the senior staff can compare and contrast the opinions of each user of the system with that of their own and access the quality of work delivered by each member of the scouting team.
That knowledge, together with the facts provided by the player's own Scout7 player record, enables the recruitment team to present a comprehensive case to the club when recommending to recruit a player.
For Chairman, Chief Executives and other senior figures within a club, the solution allows them to constantly monitor the work of their recruitment department - allowing them to see for themselves the matches and tournaments the club's scouts are attending, the recommendations being made and how exactly the budget for the scouting and recruitment department is being spent.
For the Good of the Game
The comprehensive coverage of global football at all levels of the game within ProScout7 is having a number of positive knock-on effects for the good of the game.
The proactive use of the technology means that clubs can significantly reduce risk in recruitment through making well informed decisions, meaning significant sums of money are not written off as a result of poor choices of new players.
More significantly are the benefits the solution is having for the players themselves, in particular the young players trying to establish themselves in the professional game.
Scout7's database has a contract expiry date for the vast majority of professional players, which means clubs are aware of the individuals who are shortly going to be available as free agents and can plan well ahead to monitor them if they deem them suitable for their club.
This means players facing an uncertain future have their job prospects enhanced through their contractual status displayed through ProScout7.
For young players released by Academies each year, the system provides them with the most comprehensive overview of their careers to date - covering all academy, reserve and senior appearances prior to their release.
This depth of information means that clubs using the solution already have a good level of understanding of a player's pedigree before inviting them in on trial.
Therefore, through this greater knowledge, clubs are more likely to give the player an opportunity to prove their worth and possibly offer them a professional contract than they would have if they were not in possession of the full facts.
This means clubs proactively using Scout7 can as a consequence give a number of young teenage players a second chance at making a career for themselves in professional football.
In addition, with the depth of information available on domestic football around the world - over 70 top flight leagues are covered in total - clubs can easily identify the outstanding players from abroad that are playing regularly and delivering on the field consistently.
Just as importantly, the system highlights those foreign players who are not featuring regularly and do not have experience of football at international level.
This means when clubs are recommended players from abroad by third parties, they can objectively assess whether the player has the experience or pedigree to deserve a trial, which in turn can allow the best players to move and make a good contribution, or alternatively alert the club to whether better prospects both at home and abroad are more deserving of an opportunity to demonstrate their talent.
For more on our flagship program ProScout7, please click here
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