RACING & WAGERING WA: DIGITAL SHIFT
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RACING & WAGERING WA: IMPLEMENTING TECH WITH A PEOPLE-FIRST APPROACH
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R AC I N G & WAG E R I N G WA
Sam McCready, Chief Information Officer at Racing & Wagering WA, explains how the company has changed its culture, breaking down the barriers between the technology and business teams to promote customer-centric practices
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n 1961, the Wagering and the Totalisator Agency Board of Western Australia founded its first agency in Perth, Australia, begin-
ning a trajectory of state-supported racing that culminated in Racing and Wagering West Australia 04
(RWWA). Founded in 2003, RWWA turned over AUD$1bn in its first year of operations. The company’s business is divided two ways. As a sporting body, it oversees greyhound, harness, and thoroughbred racing across Western Australia. As a retail license operator, it operates the wagering around these races and was the first digital betting site in Australia. Sam McCready has worked at RWWA for around three years. The Chief Information Officer, he was recruited to help the company improve its digital presence, bringing 18 years’ experience in finance, with the last decade focused around increasing customer service through digital channels. The technical transformation at RWWA has been divided into three primary areas: operating model, technology product architecture, and capability
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R AC I N G & WAG E R I N G WA
“ Regardless of what industry you’re looking at, to engage customers you need highlymotivated individuals that are offered a slick way of working with quality processes and quality technology pipelines” — Sam McCready, CIO / CDO, Racing & Wagering WA
and performance. “The organisation knew we needed to do things differently to take a large step up into the digital marketplace,” he says. The key to this has been establishing a working partnership between the
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business and technology teams. Digital transformation at RWWA remains people-centric. Initially, the two teams operated separately, leading to frustration and miscommunication. “Once they had those frustrations,” McCready says, “they weren’t seeing eye to eye on how to actually unpack
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘2020 OWN THE DREAM LAUNCH’ 07 them.” McCready’s team partnered
made collaborative work a necessity,
with GM Wagering Michael Saunders
which ultimately has led to high perfor-
and CFO Ian Edwards to research and
mance across the teams. RWWA has
design a new operational approach,
also implemented greater operational
using study tours to challenge inter-
structure, integrating security and
nalised predispositions and bring
development practices, and structured
about the necessary cultural changes.
improvement design reviews into pro-
These ultimately ranged from the
cesses. By implementing cloud tech
ideological, such as establishing new
with the help of partner AWS, RWWA
methodologies, to the mundane, such
ensures employees and customers
as removing the physical partitions
have access to the same information
between teams to improve effective
across the board.
communication. The primary mindset
From a technology perspective,
shift was a move from focus on pro-
smooth transformation means estab-
jects to focus on products. This has
lishing clear targets. The focus has w w w.r w wa . com . a u
R AC I N G & WAG E R I N G WA
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shifted from specific system activities
move towards test automation, which
to the broader end-to-end customer
allowed it to update a quarterly sys-
experience. “Like any business,”
tem to one of weekly releases. It uses
McCready explains, “there were legacy
tech to better understand customers,
aspects to our system that we needed
leveraging the knowhow of external
to modularise and resolve before our
partners to analyse customer patterns,
teams could move at the pace we
preferences, and behaviours. “The
wanted them to.”
detail richness and product offerings
In order to reach the desired speed
of our partners enables us to react to
to market, RWWA leverages new
customers with targeted offers and
technologies, implementing an
features,” McCready continues.
evolutionary technical product archi-
RWWA has been able to continually
tecture internally. One of the biggest
readjust its metrics to account for pro-
technical changes at RWWA was a
gress, relying on partner Dynatrace
to determine its systems’ performance
organisations like Scalabl, AWS and
and metrics. RWWA is highly stringent
Dynatrace support us has enabled
in its controls around cyber security
a faster than normal transformation.
control and anti-laundering regula-
“It is critical,” McCready says, “that
tions. “Our business always has to be
we focus on the performance and
on the right side of regulators. It keeps
immediacy our customers expect.”
us accountable both in a financial and
RWWA increased its digital channels
an ethical sense.” McCready states.
in part to remain competitive, but pri-
Trust is at the core of RWWA’s relation-
marily to enhance customer
ship with third-party partners. “What
experience. The measures and key
we’re really looking for, other than
performance indicators (KPIs) for
the ability to achieve the common
teams to focus on customer impact.
goal,” McCready explains, “is value
It engages with holistic testing method-
alignment between businesses. Having
ologies. A specific pool of loyal
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Sam McCready Sam has led the Technology division at RWWA for nearly 3 years. Having joined in 2017, Sam is part of the executive team and has been responsible for a change of strategy and execution to realise a transformation in the culture, ‘Ways of Working’ and technical direction. These changes have supported the growth and continuous improvement of the customer offerings of the Wagering arm of the business through the TAB and TAB touch brands. Sam leads a technical team of 160 people that are responsible for supporting the delivery of the Strategic outcomes needed by the Racing, Wagering and corporate areas of the company. Experienced in leading commercial and strategic outcomes, prior to his time at RWWA, Sam has been responsible for operational excellence, digital growth, innovation, customer experience and banking integrations for organisations in Australia and internationally.
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R AC I N G & WAG E R I N G WA
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“ The detail richness and product offerings of our partners enable us to react to customers with targeted offers and features” — Sam McCready, CIO / CDO, Racing & Wagering WA
looking at customer outcome.” Monitoring reception is a major part execution and staff are equipped for
and long-standing customers tests
customer interactions. “From a people
everything produced by RWWA, pro-
point of view, there was a huge amount
viding feedback that it uses to make
of work that went into changing com-
changes before complete roll-out.
munication styles, from analytical and
“There’s been a significant shift,”
problem solving approaches to more
McCready explains, “from looking at
curiosity-based, customer-centric
what you’re technically delivering to
methods,” he continues. As a highw w w.r w wa . com . a u
R AC I N G & WAG E R I N G WA
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2003
Year founded
$1.3bn+ Revenue in USD dollars
500
Number of employees 13 transaction business, RWWA sees customers making significant amounts of transactions in short periods of time. “The experience needs to be seamless,” McCready states, “Regardless of what industry you’re looking at, to engage customers you need highly-motivated individuals that are offered a slick way of working with quality processes and quality technology pipelines.” w w w.r w wa . com . a u
R AC I N G & WAG E R I N G WA
“ We are a business that has be always be on the right side of regulators. It keeps us accountable both in a financial and an ethical sense” — Sam McCready, CIO / CDO, Racing & Wagering WA
Between 18 months ago when the bulk of the change began and now, RWWA looks like a different company. 14
The approach for change has been top down, but execution has been at every level of the business. RWWA has created a new product owner role, part of a team of leaders that execute all delivery functions. Teams now combine developers, marketing specialists, analysts, and product experts. “I suppose one of the challenges with any transformation is it’s never really done,” McCready says, “there is a continual drive for improvement across all teams; it’s a part of our required outcomes.” Change remains on the horizon for RWWA. Over the next six to 12 months, it is going to be moving
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and re-platforming its back-
modernising the business.” McCready
end databases and product
concludes, “We’re effectively making
engines over to AWS to
sure that we’ve got the workforce, the
promote further cloud imple-
technical stack, and the product offer-
mentation. It is also currently
ing to promote a brand that is already
undergoing a privatisation
well-established and now competes
process, moving away from
very well with competitors.”
its government ownership. “I think it’s been really interesting going through and w w w.r w wa . com . a u
Racing & Wagering WA 14 Hasler Road, Osborne Park 6017 WA Australia T +(618) 9445 5333 www.rwwa.com.au