Software & Soccer: How Centralized Quality Management Ensures World Cup Success

A soccer coach’s ability to foster collaboration among players and learn from past matches’ mistakes are keys to producing a quality product (team) and success (winning).

The problem is that too often the national soccer programs of cash-strapped third-world countries often rely on folders, email and spreadsheets to keep track of the team’s roster, statistics, playbook and game schedule. Equally as bad, the soccer programs of many wealthy countries frequently use multiple disparate expensive quality tools siloed for each position.

Unfortunately, neither of these tactics fosters the cross-functional collaboration and visibility necessary to sustain a successful, quality team.

One of the big problems for soccer teams relying on multiple quality systems is the ability to retrieve recorded notes from previous matches. Because of this, reports and prior corrective actions become increasingly more difficult to true-up. “Four years ago at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, my team’s star forward forgot that catching the ball was illegal,” said the disgruntled coach. “This year, the problem was nearly repeated with the same guy because he couldn’t find notes from the previous World Cup that referenced why touching the ball with your hands was leading to (product) failure.”

So, what software solution helps ensure a quality soccer team product?

A centralized cloud-based quality management system (QMS) provides teams a formal documentation method for tracking important up-to-date, relevant product information. Such as a rulebook. By removing the tedious need to forensically investigate errors in spreadsheets, emails and old paper files, the ability to identify opportunities for improvement becomes an easy part of the day-to-day process.

“Because of spreadsheet errors, all the goals my star player scored were erroneously attributed to Jenkins who couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn,” said the frustrated coach. “Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until after we went through 2012-2013 without winning a game how truly bad Jenkins was. My data was wrong. Now with Arena’s cloud-based quality solution I have all the correct player stats at my finger tips so I can ensure quality and success.”

Another key to success is to involve quality early on to help identify errors before they become evident on a bigger stage. “With Arena Quality I had notes from 2010 World Cup’s coach who documented that his goalie didn’t like how hard opponents kicked the ball and didn’t slide to make blocks because he didn’t want to get a raspberry on his bottom’,” said the coach. “For the 2014 World Cup, we realized that we needed a new goalie – thus, avoiding a critical product (team) error.”

Arena provides a holistic integrated approach to quality, which starts early on in the product development process. Arena’s solution helps give coaches visibility into preventive action notes and helps facilitate collaboration to prevent quality snafus from happening early and appearing again later–even in the World Cup.