Bob Broadbridge, IT director of the Tote, doesn’t like to talk about himself. As IT director for the UK’s fourth-largest bookmaker, he is reticent about his own role in turning around the IT operations of the successful, if somewhat old-fashioned, government-backed racecourse bookmaker.
Already a thriving business, the Tote was set up in 1924 by the government to offer on-course pool betting on horse racing, with all the profits going back into the sport. In 2005/06 the Tote had a turnover of £2.2 billion.
But two years ago the Tote was behind in the competition, and the market share was very poor, according to Broadbridge. “We needed to catch up with retail, phone and Internet betting.”
This meant looking at all the Tote’s systems, which operated on a distributed architecture across the UK. Multiple systems were performing the same task, and as a result the whole function was difficult to maintain. Broadbridge decided to address the problems by centralising the functionality, and redeveloping the system using a service oriented architecture (SOA) of ‘Best of Breed’ products. “The context of the overhaul means that SOA is generally at the heart of what we are trying to do,” says Broadbridge. “There were 27 systems that needed updating, and work started in July 2006.”
He looked at new systems for all the Tote businesses, deciding on buying solutions wherever possible. Orbis online gaming software was implemented for its telephone and Internet systems in December 2006, and a data warehouse for its retail business – the Tote has 540 betting shops – was done last year. This year the Tote will carry out an EPOS upgrade throughout its shops.
In the pool-betting arena it had to work with its partners, and increase its customer expectations, and Broadbridge decided on a systems renewal programme built around Progress Software’s Sonic ESB. “We had had no new bets in seven years,” he says. “The ‘Will Pay’ calculations were simply taking too long – from two to four to six minutes. The smart punter would place bets close to when the race was going off, but couldn’t see whose betting prices were best. Between the bookies and the Tote we were two to two and a half minutes out of date.”
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