Wakefield Park is a motor racing circuit that wanted to manage its daily tasks better.

Wakefield Park is a motor racing track on the outskirts of western Sydney open for business almost every day of the year.

In operation for seventeen years, the motor racing circuit provides for up to twenty different categories of racing cars and bikes, including V8 Supercars, superbikes, BMW’s, production vehicles, and historic cars. They are an established player in the racing scene and will host the NSW State Motor Racing Championships this year.

The racetrack management needed to be extremely organised as they have to supervise up to twenty races a month, including private bookings from racing clubs, and corporates.

Venue Manager Matthew Ronke said it became apparent to him that day-to-day operations needed to be streamlined, and better rostering systems needed to be introduced. He felt that he was not running operations efficiently.

“I went on holidays for a week and came back and found we had a low-income week but staff wages were the highest they had been,” Ronke said. “We had too many staff on deck and they were doing a lot of overtime.”

The key to controlling wage costs was to introduce an automated rostering and scheduling systems. In addition, the racetrack has three distinct workplace locations – the head office, the cafe and the race circuit. Ronke wanted to introduce a system whereby staff scheduling could be managed online and without fuss.

“We didn’t have a rostering system,” Ronke said. “We just had an Excel spreadsheet which was run by the cafe manager.”

Ronke turned to Deputy to overhaul operations. He introduced iPads at each of the three locations, allowing staff to check in and out of work, receive task notifications, see their upcoming work shifts, and inform management when they are available to work next.

Deputy has become more than a work scheduling tool for the fifteen staff that work at Wakefield Park. It is now an embedded communications platform that enables Ronke and his team to keep in touch with each other.

“It also keeps all the staff in contact,” Ronke said. “We were really struggling reaching with people rostering and working out who is available. We’ve now got on top of our rostering.”

Deputy also allows Ronke to manage operations at the racetrack even if he is away from the site. For example, he may have to visit corporate clients in the city, but still keep an eye on tasks being completed at the track. He does this by receiving task notifications and updates on his iPhone.

The Deputy platform lives online, so Ronke can now be away from the track whenever he likes.

“I like the fact that Deputy is cloud-based and I can check it from anywhere,” Ronke said.

Staff also now clearly understand what their work responsibilities are. Because there is such a high volume of different car categories coming through the racetrack, track-side staff have to make sure the garages are set up for each client.

The tasking feature of Deputy enables those track teams to stay on top of their responsibilities, and quickly respond to customer requests.

“We are increasingly using the tasking platform to send out messages from the head office to the garages, about things such as fixing broken items,” Ronke said. “It’s easy for staff to jump on Deputy and know their responsibilities.”

Overall, Ronke said he has been freed up to focus on improving customer service, controlling wage costs, and running Wakefield Park