How to Drive Innovation in Fast Moving Markets: Inside bet365's Mobile Development

Alan Reed, Head of Systems Development, Sports at bet365 discusses the role data has to play in his organisation's mobile development strategy

It doesn't seem possible that it was only 10 years ago that Steve Jobs took to the stage, to a packed auditorium in San Francisco, and changed the world forever.

On June 29th, 2007, Jobs introduced the world to the iPhone. A device that would rewrite the telephony rulebook and with it, reshape our relationship with technology, how we connect with each other and the way in which we consume information.

Caught on the backfoot, the giants of the mobile world would take years to catch up. Some would never recover. It wasn't the first time Apple had reimagined and taken ownership of an industry. Nor, I assume, will it be the last.

The lesson, disruption gives no quarter to market dominance and as the saying goes, if you fail to learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it.'

At bet365, we are very aware of the speed of progress. That you cannot rest on your laurels. You must always be watching. Always iterating. And most importantly, always responding to the market.

Easier said than done, certainly. But we've worked hard to cultivate a culture, where, despite the size and scale of our business, we can continue to be flexible, nimble and in many ways entrepreneurial.

Data Driven

As you'd expect, data plays a huge role in our mobile development strategy. We are voraciously data driven. But data is only as good as the insight it drives and that requires the right questions. To get the answers we need, we have 3 key areas of enquiry - use, function and performance.

Essentially, how our services are being used, from where and on what platform. The functionality and markets that are of interest to our users. And finally, how well our service performs.

Each strand of enquiry as important as the last, ensuring we meet the needs of our global community. By following their data footprints, we've not only been able to deliver a best in class service but also avoid making critical errors that could have cost us huge swathes of our user base.

Certainly, Job's mobile legacy lives on today in our business. Accounting for around 75 per cent of all betting activity at peak, it's clear that mobile has become the platform of choice for the majority of bet365's users. Despite this, rather than moving to a mobile first strategy, this year saw bet365 launch a new desktop website. A decision that seemed to confound our own mobile trend.

However, further interrogation of the data revealed that a large proportion of users continued to interface via their desktops. We found we had two very clear and diverse user profiles. For our mobile user, it's all about immediacy. Taking action in as few gestures as possible.

On the desktop, users take a more analytical approach. They are logged on for much longer and want more information at their fingertips. It was therefore crucial that we had unique experiences that fit the user profiles on different platforms. Something, we could not have achieved with a unified approach.

In terms of our mobile development, HTML5 has gone a long way in helping to cut project life cycles and unify development streams. But it is still far from the panacea we hoped it could be. This is less to do with the technology and more with the mobile markets in which we operate. Screen sizes, mobile OSs, wrappers and internet connectivity all create nuance on both a global and local scale.

Again, data ensures we never leave anyone behind. We are always optimising performance for both those embracing the latest handsets and people who remain on older devices, legacy operating systems and browsers.

Browsers are a key issue. Despite the popularity of apps, our data shows the majority of our users continue to access our services through the mobile browser. So, it's imperative we remain abreast of every change that takes place and respond accordingly.

As much as we'd love them to, Google doesn't consult us when it makes changes to Chrome and so it's up to us to monitor each update and tweak our approach accordingly.

Even better, tracking has got to the point where we can tie an individual user to a specific device. We now have a complete picture of usage and use it to direct our development.

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How to Drive Innovation in Fast Moving Markets: Inside bet365's Mobile Development

Alan Reed, Head of Systems Development, Sports at bet365 discusses the role data has to play in his organisation's mobile development strategy

Evolution Not Revolution

In many ways, our development strategy is very conservative. We take small steps. There's no flag in the sand moment where we commit to a certain approach that dictates our development strategy for the next 5-10 years. Instead, we run a short roadmap.

There is a sensibility about what we do that keeps us rooted in evolution rather than looking for the next big thing. Rather than going down a blind alley or working on something before it's time, we iterate based on what makes sense to both the business and our customers.

Take Cash Out, a service that allows customers to close a bet early. It is extremely popular. So, it made sense to innovate in this area. Last year, we launched Partial Cash Out, where customers can close part of their bet early. This year, we've iterated further with the launch of Auto Cash Out.

It is a strategy that works because each step is an easy leap to make. Conceptually it's not difficult. It's something that makes sense from a development perspective and is also something we know the customer is going to want. It also ensures, we have the flexibility to quickly pivot if necessary.

Outside the Betting Box

When it comes to inspiration and ideas, we like to follow another Jobism. He said, ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.'

Certainly, we look at what our competition is doing. But we also keep a close eye on our contemporaries. While we are an online betting company, we also have much in common with other industries.

From one perspective, we are not dissimilar to a large media portal. We offer in depth commentary and statistics on sporting events. We are in constant communication with our users via notifications. And we offer opportunities to view the events themselves whether it is via a video stream or on our match live product, which offers a visual representation of the event.

It makes sense for us to keep an eye on what the BBC is doing and the functionality that Sky and CNN introduce. Sticky video is a good example of an innovation we introduced following its success by the large media players.

Lean and Agile

Having an agile approach to development is critical to boosting productivity, efficiency and speed to market. But it can't exist in a vacuum and can only be truly effective when powered by a complimentary culture that embraces and empowers innovation.

We operate an open forum for ideas, where individual developers from all levels of the business can contribute and make their mark on our company. This means we can tap into a wide variety of experiences and interests from both within and without the business.

Golang is the latest edition to our programming portfolio and was made possible because of the experience and expertise one of our developers had gained at their past company. We also have stories of developers working on development projects at home as part of a hobby and producing innovation that we've then integrated into the business.

Perhaps most importantly, is the speed at which new ideas can be tabled and implemented. Because we have a direct line into senior management and the board, a 10-minute conversation can turn into a live project that same day. Things still take time to develop but projects get spun up very quickly.

As Jobs said, ‘Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways.'

While it is impossible to predict the future, nor know where industry disruption may come from, we have found that by remaining flexible, open and inclusive, has resulted in a company that can lead, respond and innovate at pace.