Caesars Ups Performance Stakes

When it comes to managing the day-to-day performance of its resorts, Caesars Entertainment Inc. isn't prepared to gamble.

Caesars is in the process of rolling out a corporate performance-management system that will allow the $4.2 billion-a-year gaming company to closely manage operations at its 24 properties, including tracking how various operations are performing against forecasts and using the collected intelligence to help prepare annual budgets. The system uses Infinium operational applications from SSA Global Technologies Inc., and business-intelligence and performance-management software from Cognos Inc.

"We looked at this set of tools as a way to improve the quality and the timeliness of information for property-level and corporate executives," says Carol Pride, Caesars' CIO and VP of corporate information technology. "We also want to look at things from a perspective of performance."

Caesars already uses Infinium software, including casino- and hotel-management systems and financial and human-resources applications, to manage many of its operations. Those apps incorporate Cognos' Impromptu reporting tool, which Caesars has been using for basic reporting tasks.

The expanded system will add Cognos' corporate performance-management suite, which includes financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, financial consolidation, and metrics scorecard applications. Those tools will be used by as many as 400 Caesars employees, from top executives to managers at individual resorts, including resort CFOs and service managers. That's in contrast to the currently installed business-intelligence tools that are used by a small team, previously within the corporate finance group but now reporting to Pride, to provide reports for managers.

With the new system, Caesars' managers will be able to track the performance of such operations as the food and beverage service within individual resorts, examine the component costs of those services such as labor, and also answer questions such as how much the buffet service at a resort contributes to its profitability and whether a specific promotion was effective. "It will give a much better view into those statistics and the associated trade-offs," Pride says. The system will tap into financial and personnel data, property real-estate data, and even weather information to provide daily cost, effect, and impact analysis and profit-and-loss reports.

The system will replace the spreadsheet reports that were largely used by the company's finance department to provide executives and managers with performance information. "We're getting rid of those things companies hate to admit they're running their business on--Excel spreadsheets," Pride says.

The ability to identify what business practices work, and which ones don't, also will help the company share best practices among its various properties, which include Caesars, Bally's, Grand Casinos, the Flamingo, and Paris gaming resorts.

A pilot project of the system was successfully implemented at the Flamingo in just 90 days last summer, and the company is starting to implement the technology at its other properties, Pride says. The goal is to have the system in place when the company's annual budget-preparation process begins in August. Later this year, Caesars plans to expand the new performance-management system to incorporate human-resources data.

Caesars Entertainment is in the process of being acquired by Harrah's Entertainment Inc., and that $9.4 billion deal is expected to close in June. The merger isn't expected to affect the rollout of the performance-management system.