Compudigm and Sybase Provide a Clear Map to Customer Loyalty for Crown Casino
Commentary by Clayton Wheeler, Gaming Machine Analyst, Crown Limited<br><br>What Works?, Volume 10
Business Challenge
Increase casino patronage and maximize gaming operations.
Solution
Sybase® Adaptive Server® IQ Multiplex and Compudigm SeePower®
Results
Highly effective marketing campaigns generated at a tenth of their previous cost, increased patronage during traditionally low use periods, faster identification of floor change impact.
The Crown Casino Entertainment Complex comprises over 500,000 square meters of comprehensive entertainment facilities combined with state-of-the-art technology to create one of the most innovative and technologically advanced gaming sites in the world.
In any business, success or failure is based on the ability to make the right decisions. In the gaming industry, decisions used to be made with a little trial and error, intuition, and finally, a best guess. Today the right business decisions are built on hard data. In 1998, Crown had the data—lots and lots of transactional data. What Crown lacked was a way to clearly see the information the data contained, and that year Crown posted an AUS$140 million-plus loss.
To turn the direction around, Crown knew it needed to get to the key information contained in the massive amount of customer and gaming data collected. Crown turned to Compudigm International to analyze how the business operates and interacts with customers.
Compudigm's business intelligence solutions offer advanced data visualization tools moving well beyond the limitations of pie and bar charts. Its flagship product, SeePower, analyzes operational and customer data and literally draws a picture of how a business is operating. Compudigm's advanced data visualization empowers business management with the ability to easily spot trends and capture opportunities.
To quickly analyze massive amounts of data and produce intuitive visualizations, Compudigm relies on the technology of Sybase's Adaptive Server IQ Multiplex and a new generation of data warehouse design called Relational Data Cubes, or Rcubes®. Adaptive Server IQ offers patented indexing technologies designed specifically for data analysis and delivers a significant performance advantage over traditional relational databases. Additional performance gains were achieved through the use of Rcubes data warehouse design. This design also made the data warehouse much easier to design, manage, and maintain. Besides delivering fast, ad hoc business analysis, unmatched scalability, and 24x7 reliability, IQ's Multiplex technology is one of the only databases that support an RCubes design.
Using SeePower, Crown began to achieve remarkable returns on its marketing campaigns. One campaign to 50,000 people achieved the same total response as had a mailer to 800,000 Melbourne customers, and it cost less than 10 percent. Crown was also able to characterize and target new opportunities for marketing programs, resulting in a 3.5 percent incremental revenue increase during its seasonally low periods.
Crown needed to maximize its gaming operation and make the most out of every square meter of casino space. For Crown, this turned out to be no small undertaking, as it offers one of the largest gaming facilities in the Southern Hemisphere, with 350 gaming tables and 2,500 slots, spanning half a kilometer in length. SeePower enables Crown to carry out complex spatial analysis and provide advanced data visualization displays to track the usage and profitability of machines and tables over time. Crown now can easily determine a gaming machine's best position on the gaming floor, track floor configuration effectiveness, and immediately test out proposed location changes. Recently, Crown implemented a change to one of its room layouts, resulting in an unexpected increase in the percentage of low revenue players. Using SeePower, the subtle yet negative results were visible within a couple of weeks. Previously, it would have taken months to realize the impact.
Today, Crown is realizing real improvements in growing its domestic slot and table business. SeePower, having already paid for itself many times over, will continue to drive patron frequency and length of stay, further contributing to Crown's overall revenue growth.
This article originally appeared in the 11/01/2000 issue of TDWI.