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Tipperary greyhound tracks set for digital transformation

Tipperary's Thurles and Clonmel greyhound tracks are set to benefit from a digital transformation after the Irish Greyhound Board (IGB) announced a five-year technology partnership which will see the sport enhance its customer experience.

The IGB has signed a contract with Innovate Business Technology for the delivery of cloud managed services which will bring greyhound racing much closer to its followers both on and off track.

Innovate, a leading Irish cloud service and IT solutions provider, will provide an infrastructure that will enable IGB to expand the use of video services, seamlessly cope with peaks in betting demand, and also improve their on-premise customer experience.

The service involves the migration of the IGB’s infrastructure from Amazon Web Services to Microsoft Azure, and optimises the company’s investment to allow for future growth and innovation.

Innovate will also deliver productivity solutions to IGB’s staff, allowing them to work more securely and efficiently using Microsoft Office 365 suite of products

“The Irish Greyhound Board is continually looking to use technology to enhance the customer experience, both within our stadia and for clients remotely accessing our services,” said Joe Lewins, Director of Tote and Wagering.

“Our partnership with Innovate will produce many obvious boosts to the racing consumer, such as enabling us to seamlessly integrate their tote betting, refreshments, food and drink onto a single payment point.

“We also want to expand the use of video services to increase our target audience and revenue streams through an easily accessible and reliable video stream.

“We selected Innovate as our cloud service provider because they demonstrated a real knowledge of how to map our IT transformation to the goals of our business.

“Their solution delivers not just a modernised environment for today’s needs, it is future-proofed for our growth plans around video access, and will ultimately bring us closer to the customer.”

Jim Hughes, Innovate CEO, said that the experience that his team brings to customer digital transformation, combined with the support of partners such as Microsoft, proved a compelling proposition for the Irish Greyhound Board.

“Innovate believes that technology has the power to transform organisations, and we look forward to working closely alongside the IGB team over the coming five years, to deliver an outstanding customer experience.

“At Innovate our team share an obsession with digital transformation, and are expert at solving complex business problems using the best technology”, continues Jim.