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110 Part II • Descriptive Analytics

its customer-tracking systems—and to act on that understanding through improved
marketing cam paigns and heightened levels of customer service. For example, the addi-
tion of hotel data offered new insights about the increased gaming local patrons do when
they stay at a hotel. This, in turn, enabled new incentive programs (such as a free hotel
night) that have pleased locals and increased Isle’s customer loyalty.
The hotel data also has enhanced Isle’s customer hosting program. By automatically
notifying hosts when a high-value guest arrives at a hotel, hosts have forged deeper rela-
tionships with their most important clients. “This is by far the best tool we’ve had since
I’ve been at the com pany,” wrote one of the hosts.
Isle of Capri can now do more accurate property-to-property comparisons and
analyses, largely because Teradata consolidated disparate data housed at individual
properties and centralized it in one location. One result: A centralized intranet site
posts daily figures for each individual property, so they can compare such things as
performance of revenue from slot machines and table games, as well as complimentary
redemption values. In addition, the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence tool enables
additional comparisons, such as direct-mail redemption values, specific direct-mail
program response rates, direct-mail–incented gaming revenue, hotel-incented gaming
revenue, noncomplimentary (cash) revenue from hotel room reservations, and hotel
room occupancy. One clear benefit is that it holds individual properties accountable
for constantly raising the bar.
Beginning with an important change in marketing strategy that shifted the focus to
customer days, time and again the Teradata/IBM Cognos BI implementation has dem-
onstrated the value of extending the power of data throughout Isle’s enterprise. This
includes immediate analysis of response rates to marketing campaigns and the addition
of profit and loss data that has successfully connected customer value and total property
value. One example of the power of this integration: By joining customer value and total
property value, Isle gains a better understanding of its retail customers—a population
invisible to them before—enabling them to more effectively target marketing efforts, such
as radio ads.
Perhaps most significantly, Isle has begun to add slot machine data to the mix.
The most important and immediate impact will be the way in which customer value
will inform purchasing of new machines and product placement on the customer floor.
Down the road, the addition of this data also might position Isle to take advantage
of server-based gaming, where slot machines on the casino floor will essentially be
computer terminals that enable the casino to switch a game to a new one in a matter
of seconds.
In short, as Isle constructs its solutions for regularly funneling slot machine data into
the warehouse, its ability to use data to re-imagine the floor and forge ever deeper and
more lasting relationships will exceed anything it might have expected when it embarked
on this project.

QuestiOns fOr the OPening vignette

1. Why is it important for Isle to have an EDW?
2. What were the business challenges or opportunities that Isle was facing?
3. What was the process Isle followed to realize EDW? Comment on the potential
challenges Isle might have had going through the process of EDW development.
4. What were the benefits of implementing an EDW at Isle? Can you think of other
potential benefits that were not listed in the case?
5. Why do you think large enterprises like Isle in the gaming industry can succeed
without having a capable data warehouse/business intelligence infrastructure?

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