Ladbrokes: Do more with Data in Real-Time
Ladbrokes plc is a leader in the global betting and gaming market with annual group revenues of more than £1 billion.
Digital channels have revolutionised the gaming industry. The trend towards mobile has meant that online betting has quickly gained traction.
Increasingly, consumers are using mobile devices to gamble, making online the fastest and most effective channel through which to engage consumers and increase turnover. In order to optimise the business for a data-driven future, Ladbrokes wanted to get more out of the data at its disposal.
Business Challenge
To support effective business growth, Ladbrokes wanted greater visibility around its key metrics and KPIs, across their different channels. The gaming company saw most consumer engagement on Saturdays and needed to monitor this activity more closely so that it could ensure weekend targets were met.
They wanted to automate intra-day reporting, segmented by channel so that different consumer touch-points could be analysed individually. This would allow the team to work with the data in a more deliberate and strategic manner. Rather than simply reporting on the status quo, time and energy could be spent on using the data to influence decisions and implement effective change, to ensure that Ladbrokes continually met its targets.
Station10’s Solution
Station10 helped Ladbrokes get more out of its current data analytics capabilities. Using the intelligence that Ladbrokes was already gleaning from its Analytics tool, Station10 worked to optimise strategic performance monitoring by setting up automated real-time reports, distributed automatically via email, during the peak period.
- Step one: Data-driven optimisation
Station10 gathered the requirements for the performance report and established key metrics. Segments and API queries were then created to pull this information into a report, which was programmed to extract data and update itself at regular intervals. This then triggered an automated e-mail to be sent out, which included the latest figures as well as a cumulative view of results for the entire day.
- Step two: Go further with data
Ladbrokes were keen to go further. Google Analytics was providing Ladbrokes with vital information, but there was potential to harness more data intelligence.
Ladbrokes’ Google Analytics data was next replaced with a more reliable and detailed data-set that included precise transactional and financial figures. Ladbrokes could then see which channels were performing best and which required optimisation.
As with any good data innovation programme, this project only kept evolving.
As the programme developed, more data was added from different departments so that information from Customer Services and IT Operations were included in the real-time reports. This armed the teams with further information, allowing them to gain a better view of overall performance and enabling them to keep track of and resolve any issues as they occurred.
Having been so effective at monitoring and optimising weekend performance, this automated solution was then extended to report on activities during big gaming events, such as The World Cup and Cheltenham. Now Ladbrokes uses the system every day so that the business has a comprehensive understanding of its on-going performance and can keep itself on track each day.
Business Benefits
Access to real-time data intelligence enables Ladbrokes to track its performance more accurately. This empowers the business to make more informed decisions and any necessary changes, quickly, to ensure that revenue targets are met. Ladbrokes now benefits from:
- Greater insight into key performance metrics
- Enhanced visibility across the business
- Improved internal communication and collaboration
- Better informed and more strategic decision making
- Teams encouraged to meet or exceed targets
- Future data insight programmes involving Customer Targeting based on segmentation of consumer behaviour
From great insight comes effective action.
Having harnessed its own data to gain a greater understanding of its performance, Ladbrokes was eager to drive more from this intelligence. The gaming company subsequently engaged Station10 to help it capitalise on its data further to directly target its customers based on behavioural segmentation.