Harrah's is a very popular case for analytics, well covered in the HBR article Competing with Analytics (a must read), now a recent article has highlighted thier efforts on the "Operational CRM " front and effort driven by the senior vice president and CIO of Harrah's Entertainment, Tim Stanley. "operational CRM," is a combination of technologies the company deployed in 2005 to bring CRM closer to real time. Based on up-to-the minute customer info, employees now ply patrons with special rewards and other benefits, a tactic that has boosted Harrah's revenue by 10%."What's cool about technology is how much you can integrate into an ecosystem, and building projects and processes around humans," says Stanley, who began his career as a U.S. Air Force officer working on advanced missile guidance and early GPS efforts. "That's also what's most challenging, especially for consumers with the technology they have now."

Another challenge is dealing with two monster acquisitions: Horseshoe ($1.5 billion) in 2004 and Caesars ($9.3 billion) in 2005. Stanley successfully completed IT integration with Horseshoe last year, but the far larger integration with Caesars is ongoing.

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Prashanth Rai