• Describe and comment on CRM at Harrah’s? Harrah’s organisation structure was decentralised with each property managing its own revenues, customer base and profitability. Satre, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer was keen to consolidate all CRM activities that would provide a centralised repository of customer information and help build loyalty. To achieve this goal, they came up with the Winner’s Information Network, a national database. They followed it up with a common card across all their locations and common analytical tools that would help them track consumer behaviour, spending patterns and preferences. With three options of cost structure, product innovation and building customer relationships laid down before Satre on achieving market leadership, he chose the last option as the most sustainable. However, by 1998, the company was not achieving as per expectations. This was attributed to the autonomous nature of operations with independent marketing activities followed by each property which had to be streamlined to centralize all marketing coordination without any hiccup at the strategic or operational level. With a major focus of changing customer preferences to only Harrah’s and nowhere else, they launched the three major initiatives of: • Changing the organisation structure • Building the Harrah’s brand by delivering extraordinary service • Exploiting relationship marketing activities The CRM consisted of two elements: Database marketing and Total Gold Program in the fall of 1997. This entailed a huge investment of $100 million in Information Technology across all their properties so that information could be collated on a central repository. The total Gold program allowed customers to consolidate all their playing in one card across any of Harrah’s properties so that points could be accumulated and redeemed