"The data is in the system to answer any question the business wants to ask."

Bruce Clarke, Chief Financial Officer

The Company

Moonee Valley Racecourse (“The Valley”) has been a significant part of Victoria’s racing history for more than 135 years. The Club’s signature race, the Ladbrokes W.S. Cox Plate, is celebrated as The Weight-for-Age Championship of Australia, with past winners including Phar Lap, Kingston Town, Might and Power, Sunline and Winx. The race was named after racing pioneer and Club founder William Samuel Cox, who in 1882 leased and transformed his private farmland into what is known today as the Moonee Valley Racecourse.

Established in 1883, the Valley is considered Melbourne’s most appealing spectator racecourse, offering an exciting, up-close and personal entertainment experience like no other. It has enjoyed a rich and vibrant history of thoroughbred horse racing at its unique amphitheatre track, and was the first Australian metropolitan track to conduct night racing.

MVRC is a member-based organisation, with key activities including racing, functions & events, gaming venue operations and property development.

The Need

MVRC needed a solutions platform that would support the organisation with its current and future business requirements, replacing a suite of existing disparate systems. The project provided an opportunity for the Club to implement ‘best practice’ system controls and processes within the business, and review processes across different business units with an aim to improve consistency and efficiency.

Challenges

MVRC reached out to Professional Advantage to implement a solution with the ability to respond to business changes and requirements. They wanted to remedy the fact that each business unit had their own system and process.

The Solution

Selected for its demonstrated technical expertise in implementing leading-edge Microsoft-based solutions, Professional Advantage was chosen to deploy Upbeat within Microsoft Dynamics CRM along with integration to Microsoft Dynamics GP.

“There is excellent integrity with the integration between CRM and GP. If we ever have a question about a transaction in our financials, we can easily trace it from GP back to CRM.”
Bruce Clarke, CFO.

Upbeat Membership meets the system needs of forward thinking membership-based organisations who are seeking to deliver an enhanced member experience with increased efficiency. A modern membership system helps to meet the “do more with less” challenge by automating tasks, streamlining processes, and providing data-based insights that can drive action.

With an extensive knowledge of membership and event management associations, and specific expertise in the racing industry, Professional Advantage were able to deliver Upbeat, out of the box, without any custom development. Upbeat and CRM replaced the various systems and processes previously used throughout MVRC which simplified support requirements and provided organisational-wide access to critical business information.

Results

MVRC has experienced significant wins and improvements in their operations.

• E-ticketing saves time and effort each month
  By replacing general race meeting paper tickets with electronic fulfilment, MVRC saw significant year-on-year savings in printing, postage and courier costs. The customer experience has also been markedly improved. “E-Ticketing has enabled us to capture customer data directly and created operational efficiencies which has resulted in less reliance on manual processes, Australia Post, couriers and ticketing agencies. We can also now more easily meet sponsorship fulfilment requirements.” Bruce Clarke, CFO
• Better communications between teams
  The private event booking calendar now shows alongside race meetings and public functions, reducing the chance of double-booking function spaces / rooms. Staff taking private bookings can see member status, and have the full picture of room availability.
• Streamlined loyalty process
  By tightly integrating attendance data from racecourse turnstiles into Upbeat, members are automatically credited with loyalty points for attending race meetings or for fulfilling other transactional milestones. This has simplified the administration of the loyalty system, and allows loyalty transaction information to be displayed as required via MVRC’s website/membership portal.
• Fulfilment of General Admission ticketing on sold out Cox Plate Race Days for the past two years
  MVRC experienced unprecedented demand for General Admission ticketing for the 2017 and 2018 Cox Plate events. The introduction of E-Ticketing allowed MVRC to remain in control of ticket sales (previously sales responsibility was handed over to a ticketing agency in the two weeks prior to the event). All customer data was therefore captured for future marketing and analysis purposes. The integration between CRM and the MVRC webstore provided excellent visibility into live ticket availability.
• Race Day attendance import
  Scribe integration is used to import race day attendance into CRM. This data is then used to grant loyalty points to members. Member attendance data is also made available via the Club’s business intelligence platform, which enables detailed analytics to be performed on member attendance rates.

Upbeat has also provided MVRC with:

• One centrally managed database providing a single view of all members, visitors, sponsors, corporate clients, and events.
• The ability to track and manage interactions between clients and MVRC.
• Improved and streamlined business processes to support the management of customers in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
• An improved customer experience with MVRC, increasing and reinforcing the value of each customer.
• Real time bi-directional integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP and online transactions via MVRC’s website and payment gateway.
• The use of ClickDimensions for marketing campaigns drawing on data from CRM and allowing the business to quickly action member behaviour based on business requests. The results of campaigns are also stored in CRM.
• Configurability by MVRC power users to respond to business requests as required.