Whitecap Canada Inc. Helps Woodbine Entertainment Group (WEG) Establish an Engaging Web Presence with MOSS 2007
Background
Woodbine Entertainment Group (WEG) (www.woodbineentertainment.com) is one of the oldest and largest sports organizations in North America. WEG operates a range of inter-related businesses, mainly within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). It owns and operates two horse racetracks: Woodbine and Mohawk, HPItv - a subscription television service, HorsePlayer Interactive - a national account based wagering service, the Greenwood Teletheater and local dining and sports entertainment venues: WEGZ Stadium Bar and Turf Lounge. It also offers Champions off-track wagering in partnership with various GTA restaurants and bars. WEG also provides horse racing / wagering fans throughout North America with access to Mohawk and Woodbine racing via simulcast arrangements with other racetracks.
Challenge
WEG's primary focus is on providing horse racing entertainment to people. The company conducts its business through several distinct venues and under a number of distinct brands. Much of the information about WEG’s business and brands was previously made available to customers and other stakeholders via its www.WoodbineEntertainment.com site. This web site, as it previously existed, generally failed to meet WEG’s needs and expectations in terms of adequately representing WEG’s businesses and driving customer retention and growth. Running on outdated technology, the previous site was plagued with stale content due to the lack of effective content management facilities. Also, the structure and creative design of the site made it confusing for customers and did not effectively project WEG's brands and desired image.
Solution
Whitecap first engaged with WEG on a requirements analysis and systems design exercise (Whitecap's eRAD process). Based on this engagement, Whitecap conceived and proposed the creation of a new family of public web sites, based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). These new public sites - aligned with WEG's distinct brands and operating businesses - rely on SharePoint for integrated cross-site content management. This new Content Management System (CMS) allows for the distribution of content responsibility through the organization and greatly reduces reliance on IT personnel. Further, the development of enhanced dynamic content streams was achived via extensions to the Sharepoint platform - to allow WEG to pull externally sourced data into the platform in near real-time. One such enhancement was the Race Browser, a feature that allows users to search and retrieve current racing data from tracks across the world. Formerly, WEG site users were redirected to external sources for this information.
Results
WEG has been extremely gratified with the success of the new MOSS based web sites. The facilities put in place, using SharePoint, to allow non-technical business users to manage and update content have been highly effective. Various departmental stakeholders are now able to take direct ownership of content throughout various parts of the site.
As a result of this ability to effectively disseminate meaningful content, and the incorporation of additional rich content from external sources, the new WEG family of sites has become a preferred destination for many additional horse racing enthusiasts. The much improved creative design and customer orientation of the new sites has been well received by customers and other stakeholders. Traffic on the new sites has increased significantly in comparison to the previous site.