The Talentlockr App aims to revolutionise the identification and recruitment of players and athletes by teams, coaches, and sports agents from around the world, by connecting them in one place.
The App provides data-driven insights for better decision-making and increases visibility for underrated players in order to overcome the challenges of traditional player recruitment.
Challenges of Traditional Player Recruitment
The traditional sports scouting system has long relied on in-person scouting, manual data analysis and word-of-mouth recommendations. This leads to inefficiencies, missed talent, and higher costs.
1. Limited Visibility for Undiscovered Talent
Players from remote or underfunded regions rarely get scouted and Scouts often prioritise players from well-known teams, leaving hidden gems unnoticed. In addition talented athletes struggle to showcase skills beyond local tournaments due to the lack of a central platform.
Impact: Many skilled players never get a fair chance, while teams miss out on potential stars.
2. Time-Consuming & Costly Scouting Process
Manual player scouting involves lots of frequent travel to attend games and by tracking player stats via spreadsheets or paper notes, errors are prone to happen leading to inefficient talent filtering as there are no smart tools to quickly identify the best fits for a team’s needs.
Impact: Higher operational costs and slower decision-making for clubs and agencies.
3. Subjective Evaluations & Human Bias
Without data-driven insights, traditional scouts often follow their gut feeling without making decisions based on deep statistical analysis. This also means that players from non-traditional backgrounds such as late bloomers or small-town athletes often get overlooked.
Impact: Less diversity in teams and potential misjudgment of player potential.
4. Poor Communication & Transparency
Manual scouting agents commonly rely on intermediaries including coaches and other agents to discover and connect with potential stars.
This absence of a direct connection can link to slow follow ups and missed opportunities due to delayed responses.
Impact: Frustration for players and inefficiency for recruiters.
5. Difficulty Tracking Player Development Over Time
Traditional scouting does not consider long-term performance data (due to its unavailability) when making decisions. In addition different scouts use varying criteria, making player comparisons challenging.
Impact: Clubs risk signing players based on outdated or incomplete information.
Background
The goal of the Talentlockr mobile app development was to build a digital platform that would connect players and athletes with teams, coaches and sports agents from around the world through:
- Personalised Individual Player Profiles for Easy Filtering
- Integrated Messaging for faster communication
- Historical Database Management for long term Performance Tracking
- Advance filtering options to Save Time
- Real Time Data driven Statistics and Insights
Talent Lockr App Development Process
- Market Research & Prototyping – Understanding the challenges faced by manual scouting traditions and current player recruitment wants and needs.
- UI/UX Design – Building and presenting a unique and logical user experience across all iOS devices.
- Backend Development – Managing all in-app data through efficient database management that was able to deliver insights and statistics in real time.
- Testing & Feedback – Limited beta testing was provided to selected players, managers, scouts, agents and team owners.
- Launch & Iteration – The Talent Lockr app was released on the Apple App Store incorporating feedback received by all stakeholders during the testing phase.
App Development Challenges & Solutions
1. Integrating Player and Agent Centric Core Features [User-Centric Features and Functionality]
Challenge: In order to provide a step up for traditional scouts and in order to onboard the cream of future sporting talent the Talent Lockr mobile App needed to ensure it offered all the core features that would set it apart.
Solution: Comprehensive market research was undertaken prior to development including extensive consultations with players, coaches, agents and team owners as well. This helped clearly identify the features and functionalities that were required.
2. Optimising App Usability & Navigation [User Experience (UX) Design]
Challenge: The user experience of the Talentlockr app needed to be simple to use and practical. In order to retain users, be they players or scouts, the app’s interface had to be on point.
Solution: The Elegant Media UI/UX Team working together with the client designed and developed a memorable and functional UX design that served the needs of multiple users.
3. Fusing Cross-Platform Compatibility [The App should work on all devices]
Challenge: With a global scope and with numerous and multiple users from diverse sports and geographical locations, the Talentlockr App needed to perform seamlessly across all Android and iOS devices.
Solution: Developed by app developers Elegant Media, the Talent Lockr App was rigorously tested across all iOS and Android devices prior to its full release, resulting in a reliable, smooth and consistent user journey and in-app experience for all users.
4. Managing Payments & Subscriptions [Making all payments smooth & hassle free]
Challenge: With different options for in-app purchases, managing payments across various user profiles should be practical, transparent and efficient.
Solution: Using API (Application Programming Interface) technology, the Elegant Media App Build Team integrated a smooth and responsive payment processing functionality making the handling of all payments and subscriptions, clear and simple.
5. Smart Filtering for Advanced Player Screening [Instant data on demand]
Challenge: In order to make the user experience smart and fast, the Talent Lockr app needed to include smart filters that would instantly display the required information in real time based on the user type.
Solution: The app’s final user interface design includes an advanced smart filtering option that showcases results based on a range of specific criteria such as user type, price, position, looking for, passport, weight, height, gender and age.
Results
Post its release, With over 1000+ downloads the Talentlockr App has made impressive strides into digitalising and shaking up the existing model of player and athlete recruitment by making it smarter, faster, and fairer.
