Our part-time CTO was instrumental in driving technology modernisation in betting for a century-old company.

Company Profile

This established betting and gaming company, with nearly a century of experience, faced the challenge of modernising its operations to comply with strict Gambling Commission standards. Despite evolving over the years, it struggled to keep pace with more contemporary brands in the market.

CEO’s Mission

The CEO recognised the company’s unique selling proposition (USP) in the market – its heritage and unique product offerings. They needed to transform both product and technology to trade profitably and align with the UK Gambling Commission’s strict controls. Following several Private Equity sales that maintained rather than modernized technology, the company rapidly fell out of compliance and began losing market share. The CEO aimed to launch a new, joint-venture brand with a large media partner, combining their heritage with profitability from new audiences. This involved developing a new set of online products and an online casino.

CTO’s Objectives

  • Manage the Technology, Product, and PMO functions day-to-day.
  • Build a high-performing, in-house Product and Technology team.
  • Collaborate with the CEO on a new joint venture to modernize the company’s approach.
  • Lead and coach the organization through a digital transformation with Agile working practices.

What the CTO Did

Provided Technical Leadership and Strategic Vision

The CTO conducted a comprehensive review of both the legacy and new market technology stacks. They began planning the architectural approach, creating short- and medium-term plans for success. In the short term, they focused on launching new products that required rigorous testing and external validation by the Gambling Commission. A strategy was developed for the legacy platform and technical debt, utilising micro-service architecture to reuse new product IP.

Designed and Delivered a Transformational Product Roadmap

Reviewing the legacy architecture revealed that the monolithic approach was hindering growth. The Director built a technology roadmap centred on reusing and decoupling viable parts of the platform. They delivered a new product within the set timelines, forming the basis for all future development projects. Over the next year, the technology team grew, and the technology stack was transformed, meeting compliance needs and reviving product offerings.

Day-to-Day Management of the Business

Initially, the Director managed legacy technology debt and built a new in-house product development team. Post-launch, they reassessed future infrastructure needs, leading to a hybrid cloud approach for scalable growth within tight control and compliance requirements. The Associate managed the Technology, Operations, Security, Product, and PMO teams, fostering innovation teams to create new IP. This technology modernisation in betting resulted in rapid development, testing, and deployment in a hybrid-cloud infrastructure, aligning with the strict controls of the UK Gambling Commission.

The Results

  • Delivered an industry-leading free-to-play game used by over 20,000 people in its first weekend.  
  • Successfully created a high-performing team of over 70 professionals to support the organisational transformation 
  • Developed a micro-service approach to reducing the technical debt and building a new suite of IP for the growth of the business  
  • Increased software deployments from once a quarter to multiple times per day as required, using a modern approach to software development and automated testing through robust DevOps pipelines 
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