INFORMATION SYSTEMS FOR

MANAGERS
HARRAH’S ENTERTAINMENT INC.

SECTION A, GROUP 11
AKSHAY B 2020PGP025
ARCHITA S 2017IPM027
CHARAN V 2020PGP108
MUSKAN KOUL 2020PGP261
SAMRAT BAGCHI 2020FPM18
 W H Y I S D ATA B A S E M A R K E T I N G V E RY I M P O RTA N T F O R H A R R A H ’ S ?
1 W H AT W O U L D H AV E H A P P E N E D I N C A S E H A R R A H ’ S D O N O T U S E
T H E D ATA B A S E ?

• Customer loyalty was Harrah’s key competency, but they failed to implement it across all their properties in a
consistent manner

• DBM changed the way Harrah’s viewed customers. It opened up newer ways to determine the customer
worth and realise their target customers. The predicted customer worth also helped them to launch three new
customer-centric programs with different motives namely New business, Loyalty and Retention programs.

• Quantifying and managing multitudes of data also helped them to engage in marketing experiments and to
make process improvements

• If Harrah’s had not used DBM and chosen to go with their conventional methods, all their marketing efforts
would have been inconsistent and inefficient across the many properties they had. It would also have failed to
realise its core competency: ie customer focus and would have succumbed to the intense threats it faced from
the other casinos.
 W H Y D O E S H A R R A H ’ S U S E “ C U S TO M E R W O RT H ” R AT H E R T H A N
2 O B S E RV E D L E V E L O F P L AY ?

• Harrah’s uses Customer Worth over Observed Level of play as it is a more accurate predictor of the expected
winnings of the house over a long term from one customer. 

• It is a quantitative model which gauges the level of play of a customer and their worth based on transactional
data collected since the launch of the Total Gold Card in 1997. The worth per customer is calculated as a
product of the house advantage on a game, average bet amount, the number of bets per hour and the number
of hours played per day. This analysis helps Harrah’s identify high worth customers as opportunity segments
which further facilitates the development of marketing strategies targeting these specific customers. 

• Observed play, on the other hand, primarily took into account the past behaviour of a customer. As this model
lacks any quantitative basis, customer worth is considered superior to it. 
 C U S TO M E R R E L AT I O N S H I P M A N A G E M E N T ( C R M ) I S T H E C O R E
C O M P E T E N C Y O F H A R R A H ’ S . W H AT T Y P E O F I T I N F R A S T R U C T U R E
3 T H E C O M PA N Y U S E D TO I M P L E M E N T I T S C R M A N D R E L AT E D
S T R AT E G Y I N T H E E N T I R E O R G A N I Z AT I O N ?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that was implemented at Harrah’s had two elements - Database
marketing and Total Gold Program. It was an Enterprise IT. Data collected from the total gold program was used
to predict customer worth i.e. the theoretical amount the house expects to win from their customers over the
years, Such modelling was unprecedented in the casino industry. Harrah’s used this information to plan direct
marketing strategies.

• Database Management - Harrah’s used the database marketing for proactive marketing, marketing
experiments, and to create an advanced customer centric marketing plan. Harrahs specialised in leveraging
their collected data. With the customers' information they were able to come up with special direct marketing
strategies. Another advantage of its large database was the ability to divide people as control and test groups
and design marketing experiments that enabled the firm to cut its costs. With its extensive database, Harrah’s
was able to divide the customers into three- new, loyalty and retention and implement the plans accordingly.
• Total Gold Program - It used an integrated IT network that linked all of Harrah’s properties together. The
scheme was implemented to promote cross visitation and to ensure that the Harrahs customers get the same
rewards from the loyalty program no matter which property of Harrah’s they visit. 

The IT infrastructure at Harrah’s was heavily relying on databases and modelling of the data stored internally.
  
4 E X P L A I N W H Y T H E C R M I M P L E M E N T E D I N H A R R A H ’ S I S A N E I T.

An Enterprise IT can be defined by its capabilities and usage that set it apart from FIT and NIT. It helps in
restructuring the business operations and interactions with the various stakeholders. Analysing the capabilities
of the CRM implemented by Harrah’s,

• Implementation: It was implemented at the entire organisation level and not just in specific teams or
functions. It was also a top-down implementation, which was brought in by Gary Loveman and Richard
Mirman.

• Standard operation and workflows: It helped restructure the data collection process (from the customers)
across all the branches of Harrah’s removing the autonomy of the different branches. The CRM helped to
integrate the Database and Total Gold program effectively which enabled Marketing function to segment and
focus campaigns to different customer profiles.
• Redesigning business process and monitoring: It also helped evaluate certain business processes and
redesign them effectively, thereby standardizing the workflows across the organisation so that the customer
transactions at Harrah’s end can be monitored effectively and help in generating relevant business insights
 E X P L A I N T H E P R O C E S S H O W H A R R A H ’ S C O L L E C T E D D ATA F R O M
5 D I F F E R E N T S O U R C E S A N D C O N V E RT E D I T TO I N S I G H T S O R
INTELLIGENCE.

The data collection at Harrah’s starts from the point a customer is onboarded in the system and for every
transaction she/ he makes across various POS (points of sales)/ transactions at Harrah’s. The major Pillars of
this architecture are the Data Base, Total Gold program (cross market visitation) and the Loyalty program to
integrate the Marketing efforts basis insights (Analytics) obtained from customer transaction and visit behaviour
patterns.
 A R E T H E A C T I O N S A N D S T R AT E G Y O F H A R R A H ’ S S U S TA I N A B L E ?
6 JUSTIFY YOUR ANSWER.

• While Harrah’s actions and strategy to implement a robust CRM  could be sustainable in short to mid term
perspective, new technology and innovation coupled with change in competitor behaviour may alter the
landscape it is currently operating and hence the current EIT alone may not give them a competitive
advantage which is sustainable. 

• What lies in the core of Harrah’s operation is emphasis on superior customer relationship management. In
order to make its strategy of increasing wallet  share from its customers and increasing profitability from its
customer, Harrah may need to look at avenues like online casinos and incorporate innovations like Face
Recognition capability to capture emotions , Virtual Gaming possibilities while not in premise etc to
differentiate itself and continue its growth in the Long Term. 
THANK YOU