Baseline Consultant Bob Newell recently spoke at the DAMA conference in San Diego, California on the subject of "A Day in the Life of a Casino Data Warehouse." We talked to Bob about his session to see how it went and find out more about where the gaming industry finds itself along the Data Warehouse/BI Adoption life cycle curve.

INSIGHT: First, how was this DAMA conference different than other conferences?

Bob Newell: This conference focuses directly on Data Management. The three key tracks were Enterprise Information Management (EIM), Zachman Framework, and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA).

INSIGHT: How was your session?

BN: My session rated pretty well. The average rating was 7.60; the highest was 9.64; my average score was 8.57.

Here are a few of the comments that people made regarding my session:

“Practical review of data important to gaming - provides best practices for other industries”

“This presentation made me cringe to think about how well data is tracked.”

“Very interesting. Good understanding of the industry. Great stories and use of data in the industry. Good connection/link with the audience.”

INSIGHT: Where is the gaming industry vis a vis other industries in the data warehouse/BI Adoption lifecycle?

BN: It’s really in the early adoption stage. Only Harrah’s has really invested in the Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence technology. However, it’s all owned and operated by the IT organization. If the business has a question, they have to submit it to the data analysts and data mining group in IT. Even Marketing doesn’t have access to the Data Warehouse.

The industry in general seems to be lost in the 1970’s. They use AS/400’s as their primary Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) platforms. The IT organizations are very much about central control. Where they use a Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC), it’s something from the 1980’s.

INSIGHT: Within your audience: how many attendees were in the gaming industry? How many were actually applying the concepts?

BN: There was only one attendee who I recognized, an Enterprise Data Manager from a small gaming firm.

INSIGHT: What are some lessons other industries can learn from the gaming industry?

BN: Gaming is way behind the curve in BI practices. However, they have a lot of continuous data acquisition coming from many geographical locations and sources: Slots, Tables, Hotel, Restaurants, Spas, etc.. There is a common Customer Valuation measure: Theoretical Earning Potential. It’s the velocity of the patron losing money to the house. There’s even a School of Gaming at UNLV.

INSIGHT: Why is BI such a big deal in gaming?

BN: It’s biggest at Harrah’s, the industry leader in number of properties. In the Marketing groups, they are looking at reducing marketing costs (in the form of gaming, restaurant, entertainment and activity coupons). Because the Gaming operators don’t understand their customer segments well, they over compensate low-value customers. Wall Street now has experience in the Gaming space, and they are lowering their valuations of companies that don’t have these costs under control.

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