Harrah's Entertainment
Company: Harrah's Entertainment, Las Vegas, Nevada
Company Description: Harrah's Entertainment is the world's largest provider of branded casino entertainment. Since 1937, Harrah's has grown through new properties, expansions & acquisitions. Harrah's is focused on building loyalty & value with its customers through a unique combination of great service, excellent products, unsurpassed distribution, operational excellence & technology leadership.
Nomination Category: Organization Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best MIS & IT Organization
Nomination Title: Harrah's Entertainment IT Department
1. Tell the story about what this nominated organization/department achieved in the past year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
Since 1998, Harrah’s Entertainment has pursued an aggressive growth strategy via acquisitions in addition to organic growth. Harrah’s IT is responsible for acquisition integrations, with oversight across the entire company (e.g., IT, marketing, HR, operations, finance). In 2005, Harrah’s IT was faced with its most daunting challenge to date – to successfully balance:
• Completing the integration of Horseshoe, a $1.5B acquisition that spanned 3 US properties
• Embarking on the integration of Caesars, a $9.3B acquisition that represented our industry’s largest acquisition and spanned 13 properties in North & South America
• Continuing to innovate to drive existing property sales growth
• Maintaining focus on operational systemsHarrah’s IT successfully and agilely faced these challenges in 2005, enabling Harrah’s to achieve record results in share price (25% CAGR since 1998), revenue / earnings growth (both up 58% over 2004), and customer satisfaction (5th consecutive year of score improvement).
With Horseshoe, Harrah’s IT completed the 3-property integration in 9 months, a 33% reduction versus past acquisitions. Furthermore, Harrah’s IT developed Cross Company Look-Up Enabler (CLUE), an innovative capability that provides customer-facing employees with historical & real-time visibility into Harrah’s / Horseshoe systems prior to the systems actually being integrated. This capability allows employees to service the customer as if the systems were fully integrated, ensuring “high-value” customers are recognized and treated as such regardless of whether they are at a Horseshoe or Harrah’s property.
We have already witnessed improved 2005 results following the integrations. Growth in VIP customers is up by 35% across the 3 Horseshoe properties and revenue per occupied room is up by 50%, both testaments to the sophisticated capabilities that were integrated.
While finishing Horseshoe, Harrah’s IT simultaneously tackled the integration of Caesars, and in 2005 completed the integration of HR, finance, and employee systems. It furthermore enabled successful network, email, CLUE connectivity with legacy Caesars systems on Day 1 following the acquisition close. Harrah’s IT proactively mapped a plan to complete the 13+ property integrations in 10% “same store sales growth” in 2005. The latest example in 2005 is Operational CRM, which provides real-time analysis of customer activity to enable employees to serve customers “in-the-moment” while they are at our properties. Thus, we can proactively identify and act on virtually any significant customer event that takes place – whether it’s a gift to celebrate the birthday of a guest who just sat down to play or a token of appreciation to a player who just qualified for the next tier in the Total Rewards ® program.
Finally, while tackling all of the above, Harrah’s IT has not lost sight on “keeping the lights on.” We again achieved record results in system uptime, and we invested over $25M to significantly upgrade our infrastructure capacity and scalability to prepare us for new challenges in 2006 and beyond.
2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
Optimize
http://www.optimizemag.com/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177103414
Silicom.com:
http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/gambling/0,3800010160,3915
0246,00.htm
Computerworld
http://www.computerworld.com/databasetopics/businessintelligence/datawareh
ouse/story/0,10801,102770,00.html
http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/story/0,10801
,109285,00.html
CIO Central
http://www.ciocentral.com/article/Harrahs+CIO+Bets+Big+on+Caesars+Merger
/164222_1.aspx
Outlook Journal
http://www.accenture.com/Global/Research_and_Insights/Outlook/By_Issue/Y200
5/ExploringPerformer.htm
Wall Street Journal Online
http://www.careerjournal.com/columnists/inthelead/20041027-inthelead.html
3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated organization/department:
Tim Stanley is SVP and CIO of Harrah’s Entertainment. He is responsible for the strategy, architecture, program management, development, integration, support and operations of the entire portfolio of Harrah’s IT-enabled business capabilities in the US and abroad. He oversees 800+ employees in the IT department.
Stanley has been honored with CIO Insight’s “Partners in Alignment” award for successful linkage of business strategy and technology at Harrah’s, and he was named one of “The Top 25 Unsung Heroes of the Internet” by Interactive Week magazine. Harrah’s IT has been in the Top 20 “Best Places to Work in IT” since 1998.