Client at a glance
Industry
Racing & wagering technology
Operating model
Customer-facing reporting platform
Legacy estate
20+ years of technical debt
Engagement
Sole technology partner
What we achieved
Firefighting reduced
~75% → <10%
Weekly emergencies
10+ → ~1
Rescue delivery
11 months stalled → Launch-ready in 2 months
Modern platform adoption
~30% of customers migrated
Their situation
CHRIMS had critical products, ageing systems and too many fires to fight
A product launch had gone off the rails
Because offshore developers had spent 11 months on what should have been a 3-month project, Race Day Pro still had serious bugs, quality issues and launch risk.
Core systems were running on ageing technology
Because critical databases and reporting tools were built on old, unsupported infrastructure, maintaining and securing the platform became increasingly difficult.
Firefighting had become the default operating mode
Because so much engineering time was spent fixing breakages, CHRIMS had limited capacity to modernise products or pursue new market opportunities.
The challenges
Fixing the present without breaking the future
Rescue a product without starting again
Race Day Pro already had 11 months of work behind it. Supervillains had to assess what could be saved, triage major issues and get the product launch-ready without wasting more budget.
Modernise systems customers relied on daily
CHRIMS depended on legacy databases and reporting tools. Upgrades had to reduce risk without creating downtime for live operations.
Untangle 20+ years of technical debt
Old systems were deeply embedded across the business. Every improvement had to account for hidden dependencies, customer-specific workflows and years of accumulated complexity.
Create space for new revenue opportunities
CHRIMS was stuck saying no to customer requests and new market opportunities. The new platform needed to increase speed, flexibility and confidence.
Our approach
Stabilise the critical issues first, then build a path out of legacy
Supervillains did not try to replace everything at once. The work started with urgent product rescue, then moved into deeper modernisation projects that reduced risk, improved reliability and created room for CHRIMS to pursue new opportunities.
Triage what was already broken
Reviewed existing systems, identified the highest-risk issues and separated urgent fixes from longer-term technical debt. This mattered first because CHRIMS needed immediate stability before larger modernisation work could succeed.
Rescue the launch-critical product
Race Day Pro was stabilised through targeted architecture review, bug fixing and launch preparation. This enabled CHRIMS to move forward with a product that had previously stalled under another development team.
Modernise without downtime
Critical infrastructure and reporting systems were upgraded in parallel with existing platforms. This allowed customer-facing systems to keep running while CHRIMS moved towards a safer, more modern technical foundation.
Build for future market opportunities
The new reporting approach made it easier to create, customise and launch new reports. This enabled CHRIMS to pursue opportunities that previously would have taken too long or been too expensive to attempt.
What began as project rescue became a long-term technology partnership.
Technologies utilised
Legacy database modernisation
Reporting infrastructure
Data warehousing
Business intelligence features
Successive projects
What we built for CHRIMS
Rescuing Race Day Pro
Race Day Pro was an executive-level reporting product for horse racing tracks. Offshore contractors had spent 11 months on what was expected to be a 3-month project, but the system still had major quality issues and was not launch-ready.
The process
- 1. Review the existing architecture and codebase
- 2. Triage major bugs and quality issues
- 3. Run targeted bug-fix and launch-preparation sprints
- 4. Support the platform after launch
The results
- Launch-ready in 2 months after 11 months of stalled development
- Product successfully launched
- Major bugs and architectural issues addressed
- CHRIMS later moved to Supervillains as sole technology team
Modernising the Informix platform
CHRIMS was running critical systems on an old Informix database environment that was around 10 years out of date. The infrastructure had security, performance, replication and backup concerns, with multiple terabytes of data at stake.
The process
- 1. Assess database, replication and backup risks
- 2. Plan the modernisation and migration path
- 3. Upgrade the database environment
- 4. Maintain continuity during transition
The results
- Modernised critical database infrastructure
- Reduced security and hardware failure risk
- Protected multiple terabytes of data
- Avoided potential weeks of downtime
Rebuilding the reporting platform
The CHRIMS core reporting system was still rooted in 1990s technology. Customers disliked the experience, simple changes could take days, bugs were hard to resolve and CHRIMS had to say no to many customer requests.
The process
- 1. Analyse existing reporting workflows
- 2. Build a parallel modern reporting platform
- 3. Warehouse data before customer-facing reporting
- 4. Migrate customers from the legacy platform
The results
- New reports can be created in hours instead of weeks
- Around 30% of customers migrated to the modern platform
- Better user experience for reporting customers
- Enabled new reporting opportunities in historical horse racing