Meet Florian – Agile Coach

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What’s your Tipico story?

My journey with Tipico started in January 2015. This was also the beginning of my first experience working abroad. I decided to leave my home country, Romania, and settle in Germany. Initially I moved to Karlsruhe but, just after a couple of months, I took the challenge to support the creation of Tipico’s technology hub in Munich.

Today I can be found in the Munich office, helping teams and individuals in the organisation adopt Agile practices and methods in their work. As a Scrum Master my goal is to help our teams become more efficient, transparent and cohesive, and to enable better outcomes and products to our customers.

As a coach, I am interested in helping the people I am working with in getting better at what they are doing. I like to help them succeed. Even in tricky moments, when they might be down or might be in the resistance phase of a change, I’ll make sure to be present, to be their partner in crime and guide them through the process with a clear goal in mind. This innate passion of always moving forward and never losing hope defines me as an agile coach.

What was your first impression of Tipico?

When I joined the company, Tipico’s technology division was in its early stages. It was a typical start-up feeling, sometimes chaotic, the environment was a fast-paced one and in order to get things done I’ve learned how to balance the wearing of multiple hats. This allowed me to learn a lot and get involved, the new challenges kept me engaged and I felt like I’m making a meaningful impact.

Mention your best moments working here.
There are a lot of them. Here are some that had a big impact on my development:
First, having the opportunity of taking part in building the Munich office from scratch was an amazing learning journey for which I am grateful. It took me many times out of my comfort zone, but the experience gathered definitely made me a better agile coach. 
Getting to know the Bookmakers in Croatia, the actual users of the software we are building, was another great moment. It was a great opportunity for me to learn about our business but also to see how the bookmakers are experiencing our software, how their needs are being met and what are their wishes for future releases. Another important aspect to mention is the relationships that I have built, which allowed us to work closely and make the collaboration between business and technology happen.

What is special about Tipico?

It’s the beautiful mix between passionate people, the love for sports and the desire to win. We work in a very fast paced environment and we are aware that we can reach our goals only by constantly challenging ourselves to improve and never stop learning. Me and my Scrum Master colleagues are also contributing to this by stimulating a mindset of continuous improvement in our teams.
What’s your daily pitch like?

I am a morning person therefore my day starts quite early. I have a daily morning routine which I am very proud of! It gives me structure, helps me establish priorities, keep track of the goals and allows me to have a good start into the day. I encourage everybody to find their own routine in the morning that contributes to a successful day. I’ve tried out many activities until I’ve learned what fits me and although I have adapted it due to the pandemic and the birth of my daughter, I am very happy that I still stick to it. Also, one year ago, I developed a habit of doing a personal retrospective every Sunday evening. It allows me to reflect on the past week, the upcoming week and my progress as a whole.
When we were in the office, I started my working day by greeting my colleagues, talking to them while having a coffee, learn something new about them every day. Obviously with the remote setup this became more difficult to do and I have to admit that I miss it a lot.
After quickly checking the emails and the calendar, I would then attend the dailies, address some follow-up actions or impediments, dedicate time for preparation of different workshops or meetings I do with the team, facilitate different discussions, spend time with people outside of the team like the Scrum Master Chapter or reflect on the day-to-day actions of the sprint in order to plan my next interventions with the team. Every day is like no other and this is something that excites me!

What do you look forward to when you walk into our offices?

I really look forward to being back in the office. Although we’ve handled so well the switch to a remote setup, I miss the daily interactions with my colleagues, talking face to face, our team lunches etc.
And I am looking forward to the Euro Cup. Those weeks bring a festive feeling in all our offices, we use to watch games together, bet on our favourites, have fun together- it’s a really nice atmosphere!

As you know we love sports.. which is your favourite?

After a long and busy day, you will find me at the swimming pool. Swimming helps me not only to work out my entire body and cardiovascular system but also shake off the pressure and reset my mind and mood. Worth to mention is that it helps me get away from all the screens: I take a break from the stimulation of calls, e-mails, social media notifications or any other type of alerts. And it feels really good! J

What is your one piece of advice for anyone interested in being part of our game?

Be authentic! Show interest during the interview about the position but be yourself and answer the questions honestly and with integrity. I love to work with people who are passionate about what they are doing, therefore the candidate should be prepared to back up their passion with evidence.

Meet Matthias – Head of CRM

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1. What’s your Tipico story?

I started working at Tipico around 4 and a half years ago, as a CRM Manager and relocated to sunny Malta for this opportunity. Having worked already in the iGaming industry before, changing to the market leader of Sports Betting, was a very good transfer for me. Half a year later, I got promoted to the CRM Team Manager, having the chance to enlarge the CRM team from 2 CRM Managers to 8 CRM Managers and 1 Lifecycle Manager. After proving myself in this role I got promoted again to Head of CRM, at the end of 2019.
My focus is to manage the Retention Team of 20+ specialists, with the aim of keeping customers active and engaged with our products, explaining new features to the userbase and outlining communication strategies. All this is only possible with the support of the whole team around me.

2.What was your first impression of Tipico?

 Besides getting to know a lot of new colleagues that became friends… very fast, Tipico helps new starters a lot. I came from abroad, so I was happy to benefit from the support, they offer a relocation package and a company flat for one month.
The working environment is very professional and there is a lot of room for growth and learning. But there is always time for a joke as well. To sum it up: Tipico never pretends to be something that it is not– just like a real “Original” as the brand names claims it, the first very good impression lives on until now.

3. Mention your best moments working here.

There are a lot of very good moments. One of the best is the high level of responsibility for each and every employee – for a big campaign, a major project or an important user journey improvement. Due to the lean setup of every department, the level of responsibility and collaboration is very high. Having delivered such projects for a market leader in Sports betting and sponsor of FC Bayern Munich is a highlight of everyone’s work.
Besides that, obviously, Tipico knows how to organise very good Summer and End of Year parties and events like a Corporate Social Responsibility day or a Sports day. Since a lot of my colleagues are also friends, these events are another highlight.

4. What challenges do you face?
A big challenge is certainly the new regulations but also the current pandemic. These external factors can change developed plans and strategies within seconds. But there is only one option: To take these challenges and to make the best out of them. As One Team, everyone at Tipico strives to make any challenge, an opportunity for our business. And let’s face it: without such challenges, any working environment would be very boring – these challenges give us new chances every time.

5. What is special about Tipico?

Being the market leader in Germany, premium partner of FC Bayern München and first betting partner of the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga is definitely very special. On top of that, the successful collaboration between a lot of different nationalities and cultures is another important factor. And in your daily work, no matter in which department, you can feel and even track your impact on the business – which is very special in such a big company.

6. What’s your daily pitch like?

The iGaming industry is very dynamic in various perspectives so there is not really a typical day for me. And this is what I like so much about the Sports betting and Games areas: There is no time to get bored but instead one needs to adapt to different circumstances.
To sum up some important parts of my day: Checking KPIs to find out how we performed the day before, finding patterns over a longer timeframe, analysing which Retention Marketing actions are needed and if the outlined communication and campaign strategy is still in line with these developments. Most important of all, to manage my team of 20+ people by coaching them, to achieve our goals. Obviously, there is a lot of coordination needed within our own team but also with other departments. My target for each day is to enrich the customer experience with Tipico a bit more.

7. What do you look forward to at work?

I look forward to every match day since every time, it is a moment of truth. For example: How did the new marketing campaign perform? What positive effect did new journey changes have? Did the new registered customers successfully verify their account?
I look forward to the Euro Cup (which is hopefully happening in Summer 2021), to set up the campaign strategy for this event and to further improve our outstanding customer experience. And something else that for sure everyone is eager for: since we can work from home, I can’t wait until I can see every colleague in the office again, once the current situation is over.

8. As you know we love sports.. which is your favourite?

Honestly, I have two left feet and I’m really bad in any kind of ball sports so I focus on individual sports, like running. I like watching football, but I certainly do not know all the players. So, when it comes to joining us, you do not have to be the biggest sports fan! But being interested in sports and in the business helps you a lot. What I can guarantee is, a football game will never be the same again – you will feel the thrill of every match since the result of a major team might have an impact on our work actions.

9. What is your one piece of advice for anyone interested in being part of our game?

I can give you the advice to try out our products and get familiar with them. This is important when working with our customers and keeping their user journeys in mind – no matter in which area you join us. Get ready for an exciting time with a lot of helpful colleagues from around the globe, working in one of the most interesting and agile industries.

Journey through our Migration to Cloud – Over 2 years later

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This is a story of optimisations and improvements but also several lessons learned. Within 9 months from the decision to leave the traditional data centre, it was an all-in 100% datacentre migration in the week of 13th August 2018.

Our aim is to have smarter, simpler and safer solutions. We measured shorter response times, increased productivity when rolling out new features and overall increased stability of the environment. We proved that the system can run at higher performance and our capacity goals showed processing of twice more transactions at very stable response times. In the previous data centre, we saw spikes.. a lot of them, caused by unknown factors and you demand predictability and close to linear scalability of the system and we have it now.

The new environment incurs less incidents and shorter MTTR, beating our availability goals. The automation of monitoring allowed us to eliminate manual efforts, spending less time on call for our engineers. The time and money saved was spent on further innovation. We believe in investing in the growth of our employees, if they don’t feel comfortable with the environment and know its capabilities, the innovation is limited.

We can now release infrastructure releases when we want, on demand via an automated pipeline. Since the migration, we have delivered dozens of features which were waiting to be implemented – we can now meet the pace of product innovations.

However, we also faced obstacles along the way – there was an amount of “handling” the environment we needed to learn and tackle first. Such as, making technical changes to support the new way of working and learning how different components work from a business perspective. We value these challenges to help us learn and reach the solutions we are known for.

One surprising challenge was the cloud cost. The first costs forecast was pointing us to 60% over our goal. The initial cost of our first full month after migration (in September) was 30% higher than what we paid for, with the traditional datacentre. It took us half a year to break-even, and almost another half a year to be 30% cheaper. Simplicity and optimizations became a great focus for engineers and they could impact the company’s bottom line directly.

With this project as many others at Tipico, we work as #oneteam in a highly collaborative and agile environment to create technical solutions that push us forward. We believe in flexibility, adaptability and being hands on to constantly improve as much as we can – our different expertise comes together to share our passion and ultimately achieve our goal.

This is not just a migration; it is a transformation.

 

For more information, visit:

 

Meet Stephanie – Business Intelligence Developer

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  1. What’s your Tipico story?

I started at Tipico around 10 years ago, back in March 2011 as a Data Engineer for the Bookmaking team.  I am now working as a Business Intelligence Developer for the Data Tribe where I analyse and transform data into reports and visualisation dashboards by helping our stakeholders to get the best insights when making business decisions.

 

  1. What was your first impression of Tipico?

When I joined Tipico I was still a student during my final year of my bachelor’s degree, seeking to start my career.  I was grateful that I was given the opportunity to work on flexible hours and gain first hands-on experience when just starting out. I also noticed that, Tipico as a company, not only focuses on the employee achieving the task but also gives us the opportunity to gain knowledge by learning different methodologies and systems, this is all part of who we are – we believe in progress.

 

3. Mention your best moments working here.

So far, there have been a lot of great moments while working here. The best has been seeing the company grow, starting from a small office in Malta with only around 30 employees, to a market leader in Germany, with different office locations around the world and hundreds of employees.

 

  1. What challenges do you face?

We believe in tech and innovation; we like to be one step ahead and find better ways of doing things, spending time learning on new integrations and new tooling systems, while working with tight deadlines is one of my biggest challenges.

 

  1. What is special about Tipico?

Working at Tipico is about working as a team, each with different skills and personalities. Everyone is there to help each other in achieving our goals by sharing knowledge on different areas of the business. This is what makes the work environment fun! Something else that comes to mind, are the events that are organised from time to time which helps us get to know our colleagues more, in a fun way.

 

  1. What’s your daily pitch like?

I start my day with a daily meeting with the team to discuss what was done the previous day and what work will be done during that day.  We work in Sprints where we have a board including the items that need to be worked on during the 2-week period.  I spend the rest of my day, working on producing reports and dashboards to benefit the business.

 

  1. What do you look forward to when you walk into our offices?

Right now, the one thing I am really looking forward to is going back to the office and meeting my colleagues and interacting just like pre – Covid times.

 

  1. As you know we love sports.. which is your favourite?

My favourite sport is trekking, you focus less on other things and more on where the next step should be, since the terrain is not flat.  During this time of social distancing, it gave me the opportunity to explore more of Malta’s hidden gems.

 

  1. What is your one piece of advice for anyone interested in being part of our game?

Tipico is about working together as one team, and that is how we work, together we achieve our goals 🙂

 

Meet Agnieszka – Product Manager

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  1. What’s your Tipico story?

I’m working as a Product Manager in our Bookmaking tribe, part of the Backend and with my two teams I’m responsible for providers’ and sports’ integrations. I started in February 2019 with no knowledge of sports betting and all processes that are behind it. After more than 1 and a half years on board I have gathered the foundation, I am still learning every single day about the industry and being challenged in my product development area with the new features coming in.

 

  1. What was your first impression of Tipico?

That the workplace is full of passionate people and that the company is actually bringing the “agile” mindset to life, not only in its daily work but also in the recruitment process.

 

  1. Mention your best moments working here.

I have had a good mix of both personal and work-related moments! Work-related ones like… Every project that goes live on Production and seeing it’s influence on Tipico’s figures. Getting rid of arising production issues together and achieving progress across the Tribe and Organisation. Personally, I enjoyed the onboarding process and getting to know the business from different perspectives, our Bubbly Fridays at the Munich office, my onsite visits to Poland to get to know my developers better and last year’s Summer Party – it was fun getting to know colleagues in person after only talking to them on Slack. During these times, I also have to mention the quick reaction of the company and adjusting to “corona times’’.

 

  1. What challenges do you face?

It’s my first Backend Product manager position so understanding this area is a challenge, but I’ve improved my knowledge a lot. I’m happy to work with people, who are ready to help and explain (sometimes, yet again) the very same problem. I started with no knowledge of sports’ betting or what trading actually means, now I have gathered a good knowledge base, however I’m still learning every single day. That’s challenging. That’s fun. As far as product development is concerned, I may say that Tipico lives the true agile spirit (e.g. decisions are made on figures). And I’m being challenged with every new feature coming in.

 

  1. What is special about Tipico?

The Passionate people, listening to different viewpoints which are different to your own and driving the growth with these product decisions; You can really see this diversity and open-mindedness as the environment is very multi-national and intercultural.

 

  1. What’s your daily pitch like?

Sorry, but there is no typical day here, except for Dailies with the teams otherwise every day is different and exciting. There are calmer weeks with our standard agile process such as refinements, retros and planning and then busier ones due to the dynamic environment which we work in, where priorities change such as regulation changes and we need to adapt our offer, or corona virus affecting sports events and changes need to be made to our sports’ integrations.

 

  1. What do you look forward to when you walk into our offices?

I hope for “corona times” to be over soon in order to meet everybody in person at the office (yes, we use Slack and Lifesize to keep in touch, but personal meetings are great).

 

  1. As you know we love sports.. which is your favourite?

Nothing that Tipico offers 😉 it’s hiking! Lovely thing to do in the Munich area, when struggling to make it up, I think of the view from the top – it’s gorgeous every single time.

 

  1. What is your one piece of advice for anyone interested in being part of our game?

Be passionate about what you do and be open to teamwork, as only together we can progress and bring Tipico to the next level.

Meet Dominic – Managing Director of Tipico Shop Agency West

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  1. What’s your Tipico story?

My journey with Tipico started in summer 2014, when I joined the company as Head of Corporate Communications. After five years I received the great opportunity to grow into a further management role: Since July 2019 I am Managing Director of Tipico Shop Agency West and responsible for 60 Tipico stores in Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and Offenbach with 200 employees.

  1. What was your first impression of Tipico?

When I started back then, I was surprised that the company was quite lean, related to the huge outreach and visibility of more than 1,000 stores, the sponsorships or TV advertising. What I loved from the beginning and still do is the agility, our passionate culture and the ambition to become each day better than the day before.

  1. Mention your best moments working here.

There were many huge moments in the past six years with the company – be it working together with great colleagues from different locations and cultures, celebrating success as the market leadership in Germany and many more.

  1. What challenges do you face?

As a people manager you are challenged every day, since we are working with passionate people and many different characters. On the business side the retail area is quite complex and keeps you on your toes in many different ways: Customers, employees, landlords, service provider or local authorities are just a few key stakeholders from our daily business.

  1. What is special about Tipico?

The daily ambition for success, never settling for 2nd – and same time acting as a responsible gaming company that plays by the rules.

  1. What’s your daily pitch like?

One typical day could be like: Analysing the daily reports and numbers with my sales team in the morning, negotiating a rental agreement with a landlord at lunch time, visiting a new shop under construction in the afternoon, having a chat with customers and shop workers in our flagship store during Champions League coverage in the evening. But that’s theory, in reality every day is different – and I like it.

  1. What do you look forward to when you walk into our offices?

Entering the office doors in the morning is like getting the game going – and in the evening I want to leave the pitch together with my team as a winner. That’s my daily drive.

  1. As you know we love sports.. which is your favourite?

I love football – be it as a player on the pitch or as a fan in the stadium. I also like to follow great games of the NHL and NFL, but football is always king.

  1. What is your one piece of advice for anyone interested in being part of our game?

It’s all about winning. Don’t refer to the past, help us to become better today and better tomorrow. Become a key player of our game: with strong talent and a good mentality.

Meet Christian – Our Customer Service Trainer

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       1. What’s your Tipico story?

I started with Tipico in January 2019 as a Customer Service agent. I instantly loved the job and the work environment. I am now Customer Service Trainer, taking care of the training for our Customer Service new starters.

      2. What was your first impression of Tipico?

My first impression of Tipico was good. The team was nice, friendly and supportive. I could always ask any colleague, trainer or team leader if I needed something and everybody was ready to help and very patient with all my questions. Besides that, I got the required training in sports betting, casino knowledge as well as various procedures in order to answer any query a customer may have.

     3. Mention your best moments working here.

This is a hard one… Every day has something good, but the Summer and Christmas parties are always fun.

     4. What challenges do you face?

The business is very fast paced and subject to a lot of changes which for the Customer Service department means that a lot of our procedures may change from one day to the other. It is part of my job to think through all possible scenarios that may arise from a Customer Service perspective, update the written procedure and make sure all our Customer Service agents are trained accordingly.

     5. What is special about Tipico?

As an iGaming company we offer our customers fun, safety and transparency while betting and gaming and a constantly growing offer of Sportsbook and Casino games. From the moment I started working at Tipico I realised that each person in the company is important to reach the above goal. The company gives everyone the opportunity to be part of something bigger by offering great benefits and a nice work environment. One is constantly supported to reach one’s maximum potential.

   6. What’s your daily pitch like?

I try to be at work 15 minutes before my starting time at 8 to get a coffee and set up everything. The rest of the day I teach new starters and current CS agents about procedures, communication, systems and our product. Besides that, I support the team with any questions they may have and take care of certain difficult cases.

   7. What do you look forward to when you walk into our offices?

Mostly the company of the team and working with all our colleagues.

   8. As you know we love sports.. which is your favourite?

Football. It’s just something you grow up with when living in Germany. Once I started at Tipico I started having a closer look at American Sports too, and developed an interest in Basketball and American Football.

   9. What is your one piece of advice for anyone interested in being part of our game?

Work hard, and you can achieve anything in this company.

Tipico ‘Help Centre’ Revamp – #oneteam

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At Tipico, the customer is at the centre of everything we do, therefore providing the best product and service is one of our prime targets. We are a fast-growing company with more and more customers registering daily, creating more activity and contacts for our Customer Service Team.

2 years ago, we introduced a new Help Centre which allows our customers to find answers and solutions to their problems without the need to contact us. Thanks to this, we have the possibility to publish articles, urgent updates on incidents and news about products and maintenances, to keep them updated. Customers that cannot find an answer still have the possibility to contact one of our experienced Customer Service Agents and get a personalized response via live-chat or e-mail.

The optimization of this new tool has been a very important topic for us as our customers energise us to keep on improving. From the time of release there have been a lot of changes, the latest resulting in a contact reduction of approx. 25% from our normal volumes. We believe in collaboration, we work within an agile environment with cross-functional team members, where we come together to create solutions that push us forward. Following one of our core values, “One Tipico”, we worked together as one team involving different departments and thanks to the various expertise in each area it allowed us to develop a very successful new version of the Help Centre. We are as strong as our team is- they keep us running to stay on top of the game!