03 Jul Let’s Talk About the Benefits of Data Science-as-a-Service for Sports Teams

Coaches and sports organisations know they can’t reach gold without tracking and monitoring the performance metrics of their elite athletes.

But actually understanding all the data you’re collecting is an entirely different story.

If you lack the time or expertise to find key insights hidden in the numbers, collecting this data may as well be a waste of time — or not worth the expense.

Your organisation’s data is only as good as the actionable steps you’re able to create because of it. If you don’t understand what your data is saying, you can’t improve your process.

That’s why many sports organisations are turning to data analytics services to help them interpret their data faster and better than they ever could on their own.

When you have a trustworthy analytics company on your team, you’ll be able to focus more on developing your athletes instead of stressing about your data.

[bctt tweet=”Focus more on developing your athletes instead of stressing about your data. ” username=”paceinsights”]

Data science-as-a-service will enable your organisation to create dynamic improvement plans, help pinpoint weaknesses, and highlight key performance indicators.

You’ll be able to work out strategies more efficiently when you finally understand what your data is saying.

Let’s talk more about how this works.

What Is Data Science-as-a-Service for Sports Teams?

Think of your team’s data like a treasure hunt.

Data science-as-a-service companies will help you unearth the clues and navigate the map to reach your team’s chest of golden treasures.

Here’s how it works:

Coaches and practitioners submit their team’s data and performance questions to a team of data experts.

Your sports analytics company will then return your data in a way that makes analyzing your team’s performance easier, better, and faster.

Having data that actually makes sense will improve your decision-making and strategy planning so your whole organisation becomes more efficient.

As if that’s not awesome enough, here are six ways data science-as-a-service for sports teams helps organisations find gold:

6 Benefits of Data Science-as-a-Service for Sports Teams

Sports analytics-as-a-service isn’t just about outsourcing your data.

When you connect with a company that processes and helps you interpret the results within the context of your sport, you’ll also score these advantages:

1. Your Team’s Data: Organized and Optimized

Collecting data isn’t the most glamorous job on your team’s roster.

Many organisations don’t even have a designated data analyst so the task usually falls on the already-overburdened shoulders of coaches and practitioners.

And let’s face it: Your data is kind of a mess and you’re way too busy to give it the time and attention it truly deserves.

Plus, you may not want to admit that analyzing all that data may be outside your capabilities.

Are you really qualified to dive deep into what all those numbers mean or does the very thought of it give you a headache?

Despite promises made by your data collection and management software to simplify the process and make it easy for you to understand the results, these platforms are overly complicated and very expensive.

And if you’re still using Excel to manage your team’s data, you’re even further behind.

Your data mine is so vast and unexplored — it’s an untapped resource full of potential.

You know there’s more value in your team’s data, but you’re just not sure where to start.

A qualified data science company, on the other hand, will organise your team’s data, make sense of it, and establish patterns to make understanding what you collect more efficient.

Once you let your data science-as-a-service company know what you want researched, they’ll develop strategies, tools, and systems that add to your data collection and support your analysis.

While we never prescribe a course of action to take since we’re not the experts in your sport, we do know data.

We want to simplify your numbers so you’re able to make critical, well-informed decisions on your own and using your organisation’s expertise.

2. In-Depth Insights and Unique Connections

Despite all the stories you may hear about “analytics ready” sports organisations, you know your team is nowhere near gaining this competitive advantage yet.

Data science-as-a-service companies will help you visualise exactly what you’re trying to track, see how the numbers fit in, and help you create a strategy for improvement based on their interpretations.

Combining the information you collect from multiple data sources will help fill in the missing clues on your treasure map.

Analysing and interpreting several factors together makes the actionable insights stand out so you’ll be able to utilise this information and act upon it.

By uncovering these connections and cause-and-effect relationships, the smallest improvements (that may have never been considered) generate amazing results.

Simply knowing something like the correlation between body composition and sporting performance of an individual athlete can be valuable knowledge for optimising your training program and saving money on costly injuries.

Take the work done by Silicon Valley sports data firm Sparta Science for example.

When Major League Baseball (MLB) pitchers jumped on force-plates attached to sensors and machine-learning software, algorithms showed that pitchers who blow out their elbows usually have more force on the drive, or follow-through, of their jump than during other parts of the activity.

They were able to show a correlation between the way the pitchers jumped and their tendency to suffer from a torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL), which is one of the worst, most expensive injuries for a pitcher to sustain.

This injury alone costs MLB teams millions every year and the typical UCL recovery time lasts longer than the entire season.

Having data like this at your fingertips — data you probably wouldn’t have connected on your own — gives you critical information on which to base your important decisions.

And you wouldn’t have it without a skilled data science company working with your goals in mind.

3. More Time to Spend On Your Other Roles

If your primary role is supporting and developing athletes and sports teams, you may be missing critical nuggets of information by not being able to concentrate on all the data you’re collecting.

On top of the legal, financial, and operational pressures you need to sort out, you also have to discuss your data and create a plan to improve your athletes’ performance.

Making sense of all the numbers isn’t only a highly technical role, but a highly time-consuming one as well.

When you don’t have the time for this structured learning process of trial-and-error to test your hypotheses and training strategies, you may hastily skip it, start guessing, and lose out on valuable information.

Here’s where we add value to your team.

Our team of engineers and data scientists is inherently curious about how every sport works. That means we’ll dive into the data to learn how your athletes function like machines.

By assessing how all the moving parts influence performance, we’ll help you uncover the best performance-improving solutions in the shortest amount of time.

Our experiments to find the sensitivities in your system and our unique innovation processes will help us teach you more about your athletes.

When you’re too busy to play around with the numbers, we’ll find the information your team needs so you can focus on the tasks that only you can do best.

4. On-Demand Analytics That Work When You Do

Timing is everything when it comes to sports. Mere milliseconds oftentimes mean the difference between gold and silver.

Coaches need information fast.

And they need it to be available wherever they are, be it on the road or in their office.

When you can quickly access your team’s data, whether during training or competition, you’ll have more opportunities to assess and modify your strategy in real time.

That means it will be easier to test new training methods, find more objective in-session feedback, and read over detailed reports to see what’s working.

Insight on-demand brings significant value to every sports organisation by increasing efficiency and cutting down on wasted time.

Data management services should give you instant access to what you need most whenever and wherever you need it.

5. Easy-to-Read Reports and Analysis You Can Implement

The best data science-as-a-service providers integrate with your existing workflows.

This means you should be able to submit your team’s data — from CSV and Excel files to animations and videos — as soon and as easily as possible.

Flexible options, such as uploading your data files directly to secure cloud storage folders (e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.) or emailing their data to dedicated, secure email address, won’t add too many steps to your overflowing to-do list.

Then your sports analytics-as-a-service provider will go through your numbers and process your results quickly.

You’ll receive a well-designed report that’s easy for your bosses and staff to understand so everyone will know how to move forward.

6. Expert Collaboration for Minimal Risk or Expense

Choosing data science-as-a-service gives you a team of experts continuously developing strategies from your numbers.

While your team may be experts in your sport, they may not have all the technological background data geeks possess.

When you choose a team of experts with different specialties, you’ll add more value to your organisation than hiring one generalist as you’ll have:

• Data scientists
• Data engineers
• Information designers
• Managers and assistants to keep projects on track

Following this route will give you the best skills applied at the most appropriate time for each and every target and goal.

Our cohesive team works together to give your organisation high-quality tools, systems, and processes to capture, organise, and use your data efficiently.

Since we’re techies who understand sports and the roles each member of your team performs, we know how to play to our strengths.

For example, our data scientists always consider what else could be done or improved.

They love to research and ask questions about how your data could be used better to offer your organisation more value. Data scientists will build prototype systems and reports to try their hypotheses and work closely with your team.

Data engineers, on the other hand, systemize the work uncovered by the data scientists if their research proves valuable. So the data engineer will produce a system that’s as easy, robust, and as fast as possible.

An information designer may create interfaces, reports, or user experiences to make the data come alive, tell stories, and provide answers.

Sports analysts then bring the information from the data scientists and data engineers to the other members of your team. Here’s where you’ll start to use the new tools and systems in your organisation’s day-to-day operations.

Combine all this experience and our output as a data team will start to improve how your team functions and makes their daily decisions.

We’re Geeks that Do Know Sports

We’re different from other data science-as-a-service companies because we understand competition in the sports world.

At the core of Pace Insights is a Motorsport Engineering “can-do” attitude.

Our mission is to help your team use data to learn faster. We want you to improve more efficiently while making the smartest decisions with the information you’re given.

We’ll meet your deadlines and deliver the insights you need to take actionable steps towards improvement.

And every other data science-as-a-service company should do the same.