Published on the 10/10/2012 | Written by Nigel Horrocks
Tournament organiser says the event is “sunk” if they don’t get the IT right but he has to trust the experts with that to ensure a global success…
The Rugby New Zealand 2011 CEO wants to make one thing clear at the start of the interview. He is no IT geek. He readily admits he only started using a laptop about five years ago. You won’t find him on Twitter or Facebook or carrying an iPhone or iPad.
But he is a great fan of social media as a key marketing tool for his organization. He’s very proud that Rugby World Cup’s Facebook page has more than 550,000 fans – and he never travels anywhere these days without his laptop.
Aware we at iStart like to talk about IT things like back office systems, he explained how the best CEOs can’t be experts at everything – but they need the best people and the best advice around them and need to personally motivate those people to produce the best solutions. As far as the IT systems are concerned, he admitted he doesn’t have an intimate understanding of the technology. “My job is to embrace it and understand the importance of the IT platform that we use. I have to make sure that we hire the best possible people so that they can bring it to life and that it does the job it’s meant to do in the end. So it has got my full support but not necessarily my full knowledge.”
The tournament, which involves 48 matches over seven weeks at 13 different venues, is costing at least $300 million to stage. There are so many facets to it. It’s impossible to expect the CEO to micromanage it all. He recognised that early on.
“As we were growing our own organisation, what became apparent to us was that it wasn’t possible for me in my position to be completely on top of all of the functions so it ended up with me taking a role which is, in an external sense, very much relationship based. I spend a huge amount of my time working on the relationships with the stakeholders in both a narrow and wider sense, just making sure that those partnerships stay together and function as they should do.”
Within the business itself, the day-to-day stuff is handled more by his chief operating officer. He describes his internal role as being mainly about troubleshooting, about looking out for some of the issues that would cause problems and concentrating on helping find solutions.
So he has gathered around him a top senior management team with whom he can delegate with a high level of trust and that includes IT experts who have provided the best technological expertise. That said, he fully understands and embraces the importance of IT to this major event. If we are to meet everyone’s expectations, the quality of the IT platform is essential.. We’re sunk in delivering the event, if we don’t get it right.”
After six years as chief executive of NZ Cricket, the former Auckland lawyer took on the key rugby job and has no illusions about how critical it is not just for the game and the event but also for New Zealand’s international reputation.
Keeping everyone on track
The big challenge is that there are so many stakeholders. It’s not just a rugby tournament.
Running alongside the sporting event is also a programme to cater for tourists coming here, including a festival of events around the country.
While RNZ 2011 doesn’t play a leading role in that, it’s still “right in the middle of it.” The recent announcement that New Zealand will host the 15 leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum next year to coincide with the opening game has recently added to the security and logistical issues of the tournament.
“Having so many stakeholders means that a lot of my time is spent trying to make sure that everyone is roughly keeping going in the right direction. We’ve had a clear strategy for the tournament that was built with the stakeholders about three years ago so the fact that everyone bought into that from the start was something that makes it easier for us to all go in the same direction.
“Nevertheless, when you have so many different people and so many different organisations involved, it’s a huge task.”
He said that IT was an essential ingredient in ensuring everything was kept on track and problems noticed.
He said project management was a significant task. The firm embarked on a deliberate project management approach three years ago when it started.
This involved establishing the sort of platform that would work for the tournament. “Over time this fed into the stakeholders that we were dealing with. “This was to identify the work streams and track the tasks to do so we can justifiably feel confident that things are on target, rather than just feel instinctively confident. So within our organisation, there is a heavy accent on project management and adherence to a project management system that we have in place. The IT platform that we have created is a huge part of that and a huge part of ensuring that all the stakeholders across the project stay in a necessary degree of alignment.”
It’s incredible to stand back and realise how much the world has changed since the first Rugby World Cup was run in New Zealand in 1987.
Putting aside issues of security and logistics and attendance numbers, this was a cup held just before most of us had heard of the internet and computers and IT systems were light years behind where they are now. In fact, Snedden notes that there was no IT platform as part of that original tournament.
Snedden with PM John Key and rugby legend Michael Jones at the launch of the tournament volunteer programme.
“When you look back at that, you wonder how did they manage to do that?” One major factor was that everyone’s expectations were considerably lower than what they are now. The Rugby World Cup over the 24 years since has developed into such a major – not only sporting event – but a commercial and public event as well.
“The expectations of everyone as to the quality of the event that you actually deliver are so much greater, no matter what area you delve into.
If we are going to meet those expectations, then absolutely central to that is the quality of the IT platform that’s established. If we do actually do a bad job of establishing that platform, then I would say we’re sunk in terms of delivering what we’re setting out to deliver. Having said that, I think we have actually established a really good IT platform.”
There are two IT systems in place that are critical to the success of the tournament. The tournament management system enables the company to manage people in its organisation including volunteers and massive tasks such as managing the needs surrounding transport, accommodation and accreditation during the tournament. He calls this a critical system that must succeed.
“There is so much information and a lot of it is related but has to be created, disseminated and understood and often available in an instant in terms of its service requirements.”
These system requirements went out to a tender process two years ago and Gen-i won the role to provide systems integration, data, voice and mobile networks, hosting and support services, hardware and software procurement.
So Snedden is reliant on the company to recognise the various IT systems needed to enable the company to function and do what it needs to be doing. They then need to integrate those systems together so that they can all function at the same time accurately and reliably when the tournament is operating. Snedden says from his firm’s point of view, it has had fantastic service from Gen-i and so far it has been a positive experience.
“We need those guys and they regard themselves very much as part of our team. Indeed a feature of this tournament is that we are reliant so heavily on so many key providers and suppliers.
Our approach to those people is to go a lot further than might happen in the normal commercial environment and bring them right into our team and make them feel as if they are right in the middle of it.”
It’s all about the tickets
RNZ 2011 is a joint venture company established by the government and the New Zealand Rugby Union to organise and deliver the tournament next year. It has only one main revenue to offset the cost of running the tournament – match ticket sales – so therein lies its biggest challenge in the middle of a drifting global economy where nothing is certain.
There are 1.65 million tickets to be sold. The ticketing operation was open to tender and won by Ticketek and, as with IT, Snedden has to trust the chosen external provider.
“We have a pretty significant ticketing department internally that manages all of that. I have direct access to it. I can see when we are in selling phase and in real time see exactly where it’s sitting across the board but, in a day-by-day sense, Ticketek handles it.” He is confident that sales are on track despite the economic worries. “Had this tournament been staged in 2009 or in 2010, there would have been a strong significant detrimental impact on our ticket revenues.
The cycle of the recession has now advanced enough that people can see the light at the end.”
At the same time there are a lot of tickets to sell and the price is high in terms of what New Zealanders have paid in the past for their local rugby matches. The rest of the tickets need to be snapped up by rugby fans worldwide.
Says Snedden: “We are heavily reliant on people all around the world being prepared to travel to New Zealand and the recession obviously has an impact on that. We seem to be picking up the long haul travel especially from the United Kingdom and France. Australia is not as strong but the trend there is that it’s not as far to come so people tend to plan closer to the event.”
While he believes the worst of the recession is over for at least New Zealand and Australia, it may not be the case for some other rugby nations such as the UK. In phase one of ticket sales for team and venue pool packs, completed in July, around 500,000 tickets were sold – a quarter to overseas fans.
There was one benefit to come out of the recession. It had the upside of resulting in a more commercially competitive environment for procurement and that helped with costs quite significantly. “It costs us a lot to run this tournament.
There are numerous procurement tasks we’ve undertaken progressively. What we have found is that the recession has created a much more competitive market than what it would have been two years ago when it started so that has helped us keep control of our expenditure.”
Overall, planning for the tournament is considered to be well on track:
• Venue upgrades are progressing well, including the major upgrade at Auckland’s Eden Park being ahead of schedule.
• Representatives of many of the overseas teams have already visited New Zealand so communication with them is well established.
• The match schedule was confirmed some time ago and a feature of it is that matches are spread around New Zealand beyond metropolitan centres. “This has a fantastic upside for us in that the country recognises that and is prepared to support it more because it’s genuinely nationwide. But it produces a huge number of challenges to us because logistically and operationally, it would be a lot easier to narrow down the number of places.”
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TICKET FACTS & FIGURES Total attendances for previous Rugby World Cup Tournaments were: 1987 600,000 Tournament owner, RWCL has access to up to 50% of tickets, although many of these have already been released back for public sale. Tournament Organiser, RNZ 2011, will have more than a million tickets to sell. Adult ticket prices announced range from $60 to $1250. Applications for individual tickets for all matches except the semi-finals and final opened on September 10 and close October 8. Phase three early next year will be for semi-final and final ballots. Fans who applied in Phase 2 or who applied in Phase 1 for Venue and Team Pool Packs may elect to enter the ballots for the option to purchase tickets for the semi-finals and/or the final. Fans will receive one entry into the ballots for each ticket applied for during Phase 1 and Phase 2. Afterwards, any remaining tickets will go on sale. |
The outcome for NZ
With so much at stake, how does a person in this position cope with all the stress? Snedden paused for a moment before acknowledging the stress varies and comes and goes. He is committed to a full-on 12 months or more of not being able to let up and expects that as the time gets closer of the first kickoff on September 9 with the NZ versus Tonga match at Eden Park, that the stress will intensify.
He is thankful that the quality of his team is such that he has a high level of trust in their being able to navigate their way through the challenges. That still doesn’t give him much respite.
‘It’s hard to get away from this project. The Rugby World Cup has such a high profile in New Zealand that when you’re talking to people in private or public, it tends to dominate the conversation. So it’s hard to get a clear space so you mentally adjust to it and go with the flow rather than fighting against it.”
He has learnt as part of that to keep clear of issues that spring up related to the cup but are not his direct responsibility, such as the Queens Wharf Party central sideshows. “While I have a view around them, the reality is that I have the discipline to allow the people who are responsible to actually deal with those sorts of issues. I try to get spare time away from it, but that’s getting harder and harder so it’s just a matter of not fighting against it but accept that that’s the way it will be for the next 14 months and go with it.”
If Snedden and his team get this right, it will have long-lasting effects on New Zealand, even beyond the legacy that the stadia and infrastructure improvements have brought.
“Some have doubted we can pull this off in New Zealand so when we do, it will improve our own confidence in our ability out of sight and deliver a more capable workforce than we have had.”
So as the opening ceremony lights up at Eden Park next year, how will he personally measure his own success as CEO? “In the end, it’s not something tangible. It will be that people in New Zealand feel that we collectively have done a terrific hosting job and that as part of that, we as a nation feel we have taken a significant step forward. We are a young nation stuck away at one end of the world and isolated and there are times when we sometimes exhibit a strong sense of isolationism and lack of self-confidence.
There’s an opportunity the Rugby World Cup is giving us to move us away from that and to understand that we are a lot more capable than we might give ourselves credit for.
“By delivering a fantastic all round event, it will give us such a shot of self-confidence and self-esteem, that in the end that will open our eyes to our ability to go on and achieve different things in different areas going forward.”
“There are a lot of people within New Zealand and offshore who don’t think that we can actually host an event of this size and that’s been the case since the NZRU won the bid in 2005. So that’s a pretty strong motivating factor for me to prove those people wrong in a pretty comprehensive manner.”
At a glance
Born November 23, 1958 in Auckland.
CEO NZ Cricket from 2001 until May 2007.
Represented the Blackcaps between 1980 and 1990, playing 25 tests and 93 one-day internationals.
Left-handed batsman and right arm medium fast bowler.
Took 114 wickets from 1980- 1990.
New Zealand Cricket Almanac player of the year in 1982.
As a lawyer, worked 11 years as a partner of his family firm.
Martin’s grandfather, Nessie Snedden, played for NZ cricket between 1914 and 1923, Martin’s uncle, Colin, played test cricket for NZ and his father, Warwick, played first class cricket for Auckland.
Martin’s great grandfather, Alexander Snedden, was part of a group who, at the start of the 20th century, purchased a block of swamp land then drained and developed it into the sports ground now known as Eden Park.
Martin captained his school rugby1st XV and represented Auckland at U19 and U21 levels.
Married to Annie. They have four children.
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