Harrah Case Study

Subrata Mahapatra

Ankit Khetan
Q1 – What are the objectives of various Data Base Marketing Programs and are they
working
• Data Base Marketing is one form of direct marketing where Customer related data are collected & mined to draw out tactical &
strategic business decision to enhance the growth.

• Post collection of related data about the customer like its historical buying behaviours & habits, Financial status etc , short term & long
term marketing modelling are prepared – New Business programs, Loyalty program, Retention program

• Based on the marketing modelling, suitable tactical & strategic initiatives are implemented to acquire/retain customers. Organisation
uses the customer’s data to find gaps on product & service offering to its customers, then aligns to meet most the customer’s
aspirations & liking.

• New Business program – Exploring new Business program by investing in customer basis their worth. This proved to be a profitable
program as it bought a multiple customers signing up monthly.

• Loyalty Program – Analysing the customers who spends small share of overall spending to provide appropriate incentive so as to
encourage them to visit Harrah’s property.

• Retention Program – Retaining the customers who have shown the signs of attrition, especially the customers with high spending
power

• Database marketing is very successful in many businesses while for some businesses like capital goods, it has not been very effective.
Q2-Why it is important use the “ Customer Worth” in the DBM efforts rather than
observed level of play.
• Business must know customer’s needs & requirements.

• Based on customer worth In term of financials, taste, habits & preferences, organisation prepares innovative products & services to meet the
aspirations of its targeted customers. Prepare itself to offer better products & services than its competitors

• Hence it is very important to know customer’s worth to enable the business to align accordingly. DBM helps in provide necessary information
design suitable customised products & services rather than offer standard out of shelf offerings.

• DBM offers such information about the customers which helps the Organisation to take necessary actions to acquire & retain the customer. It helps the
organisation to tailor made the Products & Services for targeted customers. It helps to focus on target customers and prepares for market positioning
& segmentation.

• DBM as a tool to arrive at business decisions more logically & scientifically rather than trial & errors. Marketing plans can be structured based on
data to ensure success by design & to reduces the risk due trial & err
Q3-How is Harrah’s integrate the various elements of its marketing strategy to
delivery more than the results of DBM.
• Harrah realised the importance of DBM & drew plan to implement

• Collected Customer’s data & used various tools to analyse customer behaviour on spending, choices & what delights customers.

• Harrah analysed the data tried to integrate the following.

• Unified the process of handling customers across all properties of Harrah. Trained their staff to fill up the gaps. Created personalised
services to their customers.

• Reaching out to customers for acquiring & retaining.

• Rolled out various programs & Integrated them in one platform

• 1) New Business ,2) Loyalty Programs for Frequency & Budget Upgrades 3) Retention programs 4) Total Reward Programs 5)
Signing up customers.

• Integrated all its properties thru a network so that its customers can avail benefits of all above programs & acquire/redeem reward points.

• Connecting to loyal customers thru customised letters & appreciate them for their visit & partnership.
Q4- What is the sustainability of Harrah’s actions & strategy?
• Implementing various schemes & programs to retain loyal customers & attract them thru attractive benefits to use Harrah’s properties.

• Programs designed to encourage customer loyalty , consolidation of play both with in a particular trip and across multiple trips over a
period. To promote this feature, schemes like Total Gold, Total Diamond, Total Platinum were rolled out.

• Apart from above schemes, the New Business Program/Loyalty Program( Frequency Upside)/Loyalty Program ( Budget Upside) resulted
in significant upside in membership resulted 16 million customers enrolled in Harrah schemes.

• With increased numbers of registered loyal customers & added with associated value services, Harrah had ensured sustainability of the
business model.

• Thru DBM, Harrah put its philosophy “ LEARN ABOUT CUSTOMERs” , “MORE WE UNDERSTAND OUR CUSTOMERS, MORE SUBSTANTIAL
ARE THE SWITCHING COST” . This helped Harrah to stay ahead of its competitors.
Q5- Was Cisco smart or Lucky with the ERP implementation project? Why was there a
performance dip after cutting over to ERP system?
• Cisco was smart to design the plan very well for successful implementation .

• Conviction of Top Management for immediate requirement of ERP for success of business.

• Selecting KPMG followed by selection ORACLE thru profession due diligence as smart approach to ensure success.

• Breaking down the Implementation plan in very methodical way & tracking them on deliverable to meet the deadlines.

Part B

Reasons for dip in Performance

• All important & best people in the organization were roped in for implementation of the ERP. This resulted disruptions in on going
business.

• Migrating from one system to new systems created transitional issues like unstable systems to support the business.

• Hardware issues to match the system requirements & business load. Issues in handling & processing data as per expectations impacted
the business output.

• System was unable to handle huge data base of CISCO. Capacity constraints.