The New PASS System Fails its Tests: British Racing Needs to Learn from these Fiascos

In the last blog I covered the launch of the new PASS system that was introduced at the beginning of November. Without repeating too much detail of that blog, the Privilege Access Swipe System (PASS) card was introduced over 20 years ago by racecourses to manage exclusive complimentary access for owners to courses. The new PASS cards, provided by the Racecourse Association (RCA), have been designed to “ensure quick and easy access to racecourses”; to “revolutionise your pre-arrival and entry experience”; giving you “the chance to personalise your raceday experience from start to finish”; and “this modern and mobile system allows better communication between you and racecourses, ensuring a personal touch to the raceday experience”.

For the new system to work properly, it needs to be suitable for all the different types of owner and unfortunately, from our experience in terms of partnerships, it most definitely isn’t, neither for those of us who have no problems whatsoever in using the internet nor equally for those of our owners who don’t or won’t. My wife, who does all the administration for Owners for Owners, has found it extremely frustrating and technically impossible to cover all the different requirements of our owners, and it most definitely hasn’t “revolutionised or personalised” our raceday experience. In fact it has done exactly the opposite. The frustration it has caused is so great that it has fundamentally challenged our commitment to running partnerships in the future, because the hassle of doing it is just becoming intolerable. In the future we may well switch to running syndicates instead, or owning horses outside Owners for Owners.

Before detailing some of the things wrong with the PASS system, I need to vent the frustration not just with the system but with the repeated inability of British Racing to apply any of the basic rules of change management. This is not just a personal opinion, as I have spoken at length with the Racehorse Owners Association (ROA) on the subject and they have been inundated with vehement complaints; I gather they have logged over 200 problems with the system. As far as I know, the whole system was rushed into operation at the last minute; there was no proper testing or Beta site to find out what might have been wrong with the system before they launched it; there were no user groups to guide design and implementation; the ROA, which could have helped enormously, was kept on the sidelines; and once again British Racing has a fiasco on its hands. It is not just Owners for Owners who are rethinking ownership. We have already heard from a number of our owners that they are considering packing in ownership because of the endless hassles, constant frustrations and just the rank inability of the racing administrators to shape up and test systems properly before launching them. This is a shocking self-inflicted wound that could easily drive owners out of the sport. It is time the ineptitude was not tolerated. For those of us who have worked in major companies worldwide, if you are in charge of a significant process launch such as the PASS system and get it wrong, you lose your job.

Right, I now feel a bit better for that rant. Here are some of the things wrong with the system:

• Some owners have not even heard anything about it, and others have not received a new card.
• For those who have received cards, not all of them have worked.
• Registration procedures have been followed but the cards have not been activated.
• Changes to passwords have been requested but there has been no response from the site.
• There is enormous confusion about what the PASS system is designed to do.
• There is equal confusion about the differences between the RCA and ROA, and the role of the PASS system in complimentary badge entitlement for those who own more than 50% of a horse.
• The length of time to brief owners on the changes and the detail of operation have been inadequate.
• British Racing refuses to acknowledge the implication of the age of most owners. Many of them cannot or will not interact with racing through the internet. The designers of the PASS system have not built this into the process with sufficient sensitivity (or at all).
• The system may work well for sole owners and even syndicates where there are nominated owners who control matters, but it will not work for a partnership of owners, some of whom wish to attend with a guest and others who cannot attend – it does not allow the pooling of the badge allocation.

I am personally lobbying the RCA for immediate changes, and my wife is doing the same with the ROA. The core problem here is the lack of detailed information as to how ownership actually works. The designers of processes tend to be young, technically competent, based in London with great broadband access, and don’t own horses. The owners tend to be older, technically cautious, based in the country with often poor broadband, and own horses despite the frustrations of it. Without really careful and sympathetic design of any process changes, it is inevitable that there will be continued fiascos such as this one. Alas, I am going to have to return to this subject again on the next blog, as I’ve run out of space on this one! Yours, in frustration!

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Will the New PASS System Pass the Tests of Ease of Access and Enhancing the Owner Experience?

Regular readers of the blog will know that I have been campaigning over a number of years for radical improvement of the owner experience in terms of the way in which owners collect complimentary badges and enter the racecourse. At times I have been very critical of the old-fashioned way in which Owners & Trainers desks sometimes operate (no computers, when they do have computers there’s no internet access, if they do have access there’s no broadband, loads of paperwork and print-outs on which they can never find your name, long queues of owners irritated by endless delays, further irritation by people who are clearly trying to blag their way into the racecourse with no entitlement to badges, almost accusatory interrogation about who you are and proving your identity, etc.), while other elements of my campaign have argued for the adoption of customer relationship management (CRM) approaches where through technology and smart cards, different types of owner receive different types of benefits based on their contribution to racing through ownership. Basically the more you spend on owning racehorses, the better the benefits.

My ideal would be that everyone in the UK who is an owner in a racehorse (no matter what size the share) would have a smart ID badge that automatically contains information about their ownership and entitlement to badges and benefits. The more shares / horses you own, the better the quality of lounges and hospitality arrangements you can access. This would parallel the decades-old airline model of first-class and business-class lounges. Apparently in Australia this type of arrangement is already operative, with the benefits based around tiers of points. Although I have no first-hand experience of the scheme, it has apparently proved very motivating with owners investing in more shares in horses to lift themselves into the next tier of enhanced owner facilities. It wouldn’t necessarily need to be through a badge – it could just as easily be via a smart phone. Alas, this ideal still seems to be an awfully long way off for British, and indeed European, racing.

But some encouraging changes are under way, and a fair bit of innovation is coming into racing over the next twelve months which ought to enhance the owner experience. Let’s hope that all of this will be successful, particularly the way in which it is implemented. Again, regular blog readers will know how critical I was of Weatherbys Bank when they “upgraded” online banking. They are still sorting out that disaster.

In the UK, the Privilege Access Swipe System (PASS) card was introduced over 20 years ago by racecourses to manage exclusive complimentary access for owners to courses. From 1st November this Autumn, new gold PASS cards have been provided by the Racecourse Association (RCA), with some ambitious goals. They have been designed “to ensure quick and easy access to racecourses”; to “revolutionise your pre-arrival and entry experience”, giving you “the chance to personalise your raceday experience from start to finish”, and “this modern and mobile system allows better communication between you and racecourses, ensuring a personal touch to the raceday experience”.

The new PASS card is to be used whenever a registered owner has a runner, and also to gain entry via the Racecourse Badge Scheme for Owners (RBSO), which allows ROA members who are registered owners to gain complimentary access to over 1,300 race fixtures per year as long as they have 50% of a horse (or shares equivalent to that). Details are on www.rcapass.com and there is also an online concierge system to check allocation of tickets, pre-assign tickets to guests and discover information about special arrangements.

All of this sounds absolutely fantastic, as long as it works in practice for all the different types of owner, and particularly those in partnerships and syndicates. The major challenge for those who organise such shared ownership arrangements, and particularly for National Hunt where there are still 24-hour declarations, is that there is not a lot of time to liaise with all the owners and receive their instructions in terms of who will be attending and their requirements for additional badges for any guests, as well as confirming eligibility for lunches. Under the old system, which is now being replaced, the reliance was on telephone calls, faxes or emails to courses. Sometimes, with some courses, this worked well, but with others it didn’t. Whenever I have gone racing I have always taken a printed copy of the correspondence with me to sort out the errors and mistakes, and prove that we had given the course clear instructions. That shows how often the system broke down.

I had hoped to report by now on how well the new PASS system is working. I have tried to use it on two trips to the track, but on the first occasion they wanted to stay with the old system and on the second “the system was down” and computer said no. Not the most encouraging start! On the implementation timescale that the RCA has mapped out, they are convinced that the system should be “firmly established” from 1st January. We will have to wait and see. If any of you experience any problems at all with the new system, please let me know and I will do an update on how the new system is working in the New Year. For the sake of racing, I do hope that the RCA learnt from the Weatherbys debacle, and that the new system has been properly trialled and guaranteed to work really effectively. All crossed!

I am always interested to hear your views so please do leave a comment. If you can't see the comment box at the bottom of this post then navigate to the post using the right hand navigation or click here > and scroll to the bottom of the page. Look forward to hearing your views. Thanks very much for sharing them.