SkyCity Entertainment Group(MIS100 2010)

By Jess Meyer | Thursday, May 27 2010

2009 ranking: 46

Senior IS executive: Mike Clarke, CIO
Reports to: Chief executive officer Nigel Morrison
Size of IS shop: 85

PCs: 1260
Mobile PCs: 142
Terminals: 620
Hand-held devices: 200
Total screens: 2222

Industry: Arts, entertainment and recreation
PC environment: HP, Windows, Dell, Mac
Server environment: HP, Windows, HP-UX, Mac
DBMS: Oracle, SQL
Address: Federal House, 86 Federal Street, Auckland Central
Website: www.skycity.co.nz
Key IS projects for the year: Deploying PeopleSoft into its Darwin property, bring the whole Group onto the same ERP platform; new car park system in Auckland; communications upgrade including email upgrade, IM and email archiving; Hotel “Room of the Future”.

Following a year of infrastructure redesign centred around the introduction of a new, onsite “green” data room, SkyCity is focused on the deployment of customer-facing systems for the year ahead. “IT is central to SkyCity Entertainment Group’s operations” says CIO Mike Clarke. During the infrastructure rebuild, SkyCity has upgraded storage, virtualised servers and desktops, and deployed IP communications creating a new contact centre. It has put significant focus on digital signage, including a video wall displaying the real-time jackpot values from multiple systems.

In 2010, the focus will be on providing more functionality to customers. This has begun with the development of new kiosks and will continue with a new car park system installed into Auckland’s biggest car park (integrated with the kiosks), and new gaming technology that is global casino best-practice. There will be further development of enhanced technologies around CRM/loyalty programme management and business intelligence, with specific investments keeping business continuity and disaster recovery at the peak of their capabilities.

Areas such as cloud computing, infrastructure on demand, mobile technology and social networking are on the Group’s ICT radar.

“As a business person with a passion for technology, I get most excited about applying technology to either address business challenges, or to improve the customer experience. As an entertainment venue, we want customers to have a great experience, and while technology plays a central role in the operations of SkyCity — rostering, procurement, point-of-sale, and online reservations, to name a few — it should be largely invisible to our customers.”