Netgen and eta College have enjoyed a long history of working together on custom software projects. We were extremely glad when they came to us with the concept of their mobile app for the NPR (National Performance Register). They were looking for a way of accessing and inputting the results of their fitness tests while on the go.
What is the National Performance Register?
The NPR, which is powered by eta College, is the first South African register for athletes. It uses international and national benchmarks for various fitness categories, such as strength, agility, power, flexibility and endurance. Coaches, teams and athletes can then measure their performance against these benchmarks and use this information to guide their training or predict how they will perform in competition.
The register is constantly building to provide cumulative data on South African athletes, and set benchmarks that are closer to home. eta College trainers conduct the fitness assessments and then record all of the information on the NPR. Athletes and coaches are then given access to their own results, their rankings compared to other athletes and how they stand up to the benchmarks set.
An online database for test results
The NPR has been in existence for a number of years already, but as the world has got more mobile, there came a need for a mobile app. Brad Searle of eta College came to Netgen, asking for a decent way to display the data. They needed coaches and athletes to be able to view their information and how they compare to the benchmarks while they were in a training session.
Our developers were tasked with creating a mobile app that could link up to the online database in a secure fashion. It was also essential that users could log in and only access the information that they had the rights to – results from their tests, rankings and benchmarks. No external user is able to access specifics from a fitness assessment if they haven’t been nominated as trainer or coach for that athlete.
Moving forward with the app
The NPR app launched earlier this year and has been a hit so far. On the development process, Searle commented that “constant communication makes it great because we are always on the same page.” As the use of the app continues to grow, we are looking to the future and expanding the work Netgen does with the NPR system.
Get in touch with Netgen today to see how we can help you with your mobile app requirements.