The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC), despite being one of the organisations in Hong Kong with a long history, has its own digital experience roadmap laid out for its customers. As we learn from Chirag Desai, head of IT & digital channels solutions at HKJC, the club–founded in 1884–has moved from doing paper-based betting to more modern solutions such as online services and streamlined apps.
In an interview with MARKETECH APAC for its What’s NEXT Interview series in partnership with customer experience management company Sitecore, Desai notes that their digital changes correspond to the ever-changing preferences and wants of their customers. He also adds that these changes are done at the pace of what they think their customers want over course of time.
When asked about what advice he could give brands in starting their digital experience journey, he advised them to ‘start small, dream big’. For him, what’s important for a business is to pick a business case and start from there. In his own words, “don’t do technology for the sake of technology”.
“Find a very good business case or a problem, and fix that small problem with a small blast radius. Something that customers love [which] your business partners would say ‘you really solved our solution’,” he said.
When asked how cutting edge digital experience technologies aided them, Desai said, “Sitecore, both as an organisation and its products, have helped us to drive consolidation within our CMS footprint across the Club and build new digital experiences for our customers. Those new experiences are built with self service capability for users that drive the ability to update content quickly for the benefit of our customers across our Wagering & Non Wagering products.”
“The modular architecture of the platform also enables us to flex between on premise and cloud based components based on our very specific requirements. Sitecore will continue to be a key element of our Digital experience in the coming years and we look forward to working with them on this journey,” he added.
He also advises brands to not do all things at the same time, instead pick up a slice of the problem, build a stack of potential solutions and then move from there.
When asked about bigger plans for HKJC’s digital experience for its customers, Desai notes more seamless and optimised personalised experiences for its ever growing audience.
This interview was conducted in partnership with Sitecore. Sitecore is the leading provider of end-to-end digital experience software; its SaaS-enabled and composable platform empowers brands to deliver unforgettable customer interactions.
