ACS News

Collegiate Coaches Utilize Innovative ACS iPad App to Engage Recruits and Manage Team

Powerful, easy-to-use iPad app creates fun interactive experience while delivering value with innovative capabilities for coaches.

Austin, Texas, October 25, 2012 — Collegiate coaches are now going mobile using their iPads to interactively engage recruiting prospects and manage current student-athlete information with the new ACS Athletics application.  Available in the App Store, the ACSCoach iPad application is the perfect mobile companion product to InControl®, ACS’s industry leading student-athlete information management system.

“More coaches are going mobile using iPads for game preparation, video and scouting, but until ACS, there have been no apps that have taken an integrated approach to improve communication and efficiency in key areas like recruiting, operations and compliance,” said Rayan Rutledge, Vice President of Operations at ACS Athletics.  “While coaches are already using InControl’s existing web-based recruiting and communication capabilities, the ACSCoach iPad app provides a powerful new way to connect with recruits and athletes on the go, as well as effectively manage and share information that’s essential to their program” Rutledge said.

Mobility, integration, communication and monitoring are the functional cornerstones of the ACS Athletics product portfolio.  Founded in 1999, ACS Athletics was the first company in the industry to offer a holistic approach to managing athletic operations on one platform, including web-based and native smartphone and tablet applications for users.  ACS mobile applications primarily assist with facilitating and managing recruiting and compliance related activities.

“After hearing from coaches about how they wanted to use their iPads to better engage recruits and their athletes, giving them a cool, intuitive app was the next step for our company given the success our customers are having with our smartphone applications,” said Jason Gutcher, Director of IT at ACS Athletics. “We want to make sure our coaches can easily manage their activities and engage recruits quickly so more of their conversations translate to wins in recruiting and on the field of play,” Gutcher said.

The ACSCoach iPad app is available in the App Store by searching ACS or ACSCoach.

Tags: ACS Athletics, InControl, iPad, mobile technology, recruiting, recruiting mobile application

ACS Athletics and West Shore Technologies Partner to Improve the Scouting and Assessment Processes for College Coaches

March 26, 2012

(Austin, Texas) – ACS Athletics, the leading provider of integrated web and mobile solutions for increasing staff and operational performance and reducing risk in collegiate athletics departments, and West Shore Technologies, an enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, today announced a partnership to integrate West Shore’s SportsBoard iPad application with InControl™, ACS Athletics industry leading recruiting, compliance and student-athlete information management system.  ACS Athletics will offer the SportsBoard application to customers looking to streamline scouting.

ACS Athletics helped to pioneer mobility in collegiate athletics beginning in 2005 with the first release of native recruiting and compliance mobile applications for coaches.  ACS Athletics currently offers a variety of web and native mobile applications for smartphones and tablet PCs that help to facilitate athletics operations, data management and communications at over 100 institutions across the country.

“Mobility is essential to our customers, especially our college coaches that are constantly on the road recruiting or competing,” says Phillip Engle, CEO and President, ACS Athletics. “The SportsBoard iPad scouting application is a nice complement to our growing portfolio of mobile offerings and we look forward to working with West Shore to promote the product’s capabilities to our customers.”

SportsBoard is a patent-pending software solution based on the iPad and cloud technology that automates scouting/assessment processes for coaches at the collegiate, professional, high school and club levels of a variety of team sports.

About ACS Athletics:

ACS Athletics (ACS) is the leading provider of integrated web and mobile solutions for increasing operational performance and reducing risk in collegiate athletics departments.  ACS gives customers a competitive advantage by providing an integrated, holistic approach to managing athletic department operational, compliance, student-athlete information and communications on one platform.  ACS customers are more efficient, organized and compliant, and are better positioned to communicate and develop relationships that are vital to their success.  ACS proudly services athletic departments in the top conferences including the Atlantic 10 Conference, Atlantic Sun Conference, Big 12 Conference, Big East Conference, Big Sky Conference, Big South Conference, Big Ten Conference, Big West Conference, Capital Athletic Conference, Centennial Conference, Colonial Athletic Association, Conference USA, Empire 8, Ivy Group, Mid-American Conference, Missouri Valley Conference, Mountain West Conference, Northeast Conference, Ohio Athletic Conference, Ohio Valley Conference, Pacific-12 Conference, Southeastern Conference, Southern Conference, Southland Conference, Sun Belt Conference, The Summit League, West Coast Conference, and Western Athletic Conference.  ACS Athletics was founded in 1999 and is a privately held company headquartered in Austin, Texas.

 

 

Tags: ACS Athletics, athletics, college coaches, collegiate athletics, compliance, iPad, mobile technology, recruiting, recruiting mobile application, reducing risk in collegiate athletics, scouting, software-as-a-service, student-athlete information management system, West Shore

Situation Critical: Student-Athlete Information Management

Up until recently, many athletics administrators and coaches viewed technology as a means to get a leg up on the recruiting front or improve the monitoring of recruiting information such as telephone calls and text messages.  Certainly, technology has helped a great deal in managing those areas of risk, but what about the nuts and bolts of your program – managing student-athlete information?

Most departments are critically deficient in maintaining, storing, transferring, entering, analyzing and sharing data in an efficient manner.  Usually, one or two staffers are responsible for obtaining important student-athlete information from one system and then entering it into one or more other systems.  Or worse, information is obtained from hard-copy forms and hand-entered into the necessary system.  Sound familiar?  This creates a large margin of error and increases an institution’s risk in areas such as admissions, eligibility certification, financial aid tracking, student-athlete complimentary admissions and even communicating quickly and effectively with student-athletes and parents.

ACS Athletics clients have improved staff performance in a number of areas through integration, monitoring, communication and mobilization.  These solutions are offered at a fraction of the cost of adding just one entry-level staff member, yet benefit dozens of coaches and administrators across the department.  Included below are some recent examples involving ACS clients and the ACS Team Manager solution:

 

Brown University

Partnered with ACS:    2010

Challenge Addressed: Centralizing Student-Athlete Information through Campus Integration

“At Brown, we have over 900 student-athletes, so keeping up with all of that information can be a huge challenge.  ACS’s ability to integrate with our Banner system has made this task much more manageable due to the seamless transfer of student-athlete information from Banner into our ACS system.  This has eliminated the burden and risk of manually entering student-athlete information into multiple systems.  With ACS, I have a central location for all student-athlete information.”  Sarah Fraser, Assistant Athletics Director

 

Texas Christian University

Partnered with ACS:    2006

Challenge Addressed: Student-Athlete Forms

“We now have the ability to identify and analyze information almost immediately, which previously took tons of time and energy.  It has made the difference between simply collecting and storing information, and the ability to analyze and monitor student-athlete responses via the ACS Athletics reporting features.”  -Andrea Nordmann, Associate Athletics Director

 

University of Louisiana

Partnered with ACS:    2009

Challenge Addressed: Student-Athlete Complimentary Admissions

“Monitoring (student-athlete) complimentary admissions lists has always been a challenge, simply as a result of the nature of the process.  We now have a streamlined, online system, capable of being accessed 24 hours/day. The compliance office staff can spend more time monitoring the relationship of student-athletes to their guests and be more proactive in preventing potential violations after reviewing student-athletes’ answers to questions asked by (the) ACS (system) when requesting complimentary admissions. Reports can be generated in a matter of seconds indicating our monitoring efforts.”  –Jessica Clarke, Associate Athletics Director

 

University of Houston

Partnered with ACS:    2006

Challenge Addressed: Roster Management

“The roster management tools ACS provides have been big help to our department.  With ACS, everyone has the same roster and this sharing of information keeps everyone on the same page.  With the roster auto-notification, everyone knows when a student-athlete’s status has changed in real-time, reducing the likelihood that a student-athlete will practice or compete while ineligible.”  -Kevin Klotz, Assistant Athletic Director

 

ACS Athletics is now offering its proven, battle-tested Team Manager solution separate from the full InControl suite.  If you would like to learn more about how this affordable solution might benefit your program, please contact us at sales@acsathletics.com.

Tags: ACS Athletics, Information Management, student-athlete

The University of Memphis Chooses ACS Athletics as a Department-Wide Technology Solution

The University of Memphis has partnered with ACS Athletics to implement ACS InControl™, the premier student-athlete management system that provides a holistic solution for athletics department processes, information management and communication.  Memphis will use the Baseline version of ACS InControl to manage recruiting activities for all sports, compliance monitoring, roster management, student-athlete forms, complimentary admissions and playing and practice season hourly log submission.

The University of Memphis athletics department sponsors 20 varsity sports.  The department serves over 400 student-athletes and competes in Conference USA.  With so many moving parts and the desire to maximize efficiency, the department chose to move away from products that provide a solution for only one area and instead approach the challenge from a broader perspective.  In this manner, ACS Athletics will help the athletics department solve multiple challenges, such as managing recruiting and student-athlete records, sending branded email campaigns and automating compliance monitoring, with one holistic solution.

InControl Baseline was released this fall as a bundled product that features a “best practices” build of the system, allowing for a more rapid, easy to adopt training and implementation program. The implementation timeline is typically 30-60 days, allowing customers like the University of Memphis to quickly see a return on their investment through improved operational performance, enhanced recruiting capabilities and increased compliance monitoring.

“We could not be more excited than to have a great program such as the University of Memphis join the growing ACS client family,” said Phillip Engle, President of ACS Athletics.  “The ACS team looks forward to a long and productive relationship, and to consulting and serving the Memphis coaches, support staff and administrators at a very high level.”

Tags: ACS Athletics, InControl, Memphis, new customer