The Vegas CIO: Tim Stanley, Harrah's Entertainment

It's 37°c outside and I'm in the back of taxi heading down Las Vegas Boulevard, travelling north, past the airport, past the most photographed highway 'Welcome' sign in the world and seemingly into the barren desert that surrounds the city on all sides.

Like so many in this city, my taxi driver would most politely be described as 'a character'.

"This place is the biggest joke in the world," he tells me at a volume that suggests he actually thinks I'm sat several cars back at the busy interchange of Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevard, rather than in his own back seat.

"We've played the biggest joke on the rest of the world. Everybody comes here and loses their paycheque with a great big shit-eating grin on their face. And as soon as they leave they can't wait to come back."

High-tech development is having as pronounced an impact on the gaming industry in Las Vegas as the legalisation of gambling, the opening of the Hoover Dam and the endorsement of the Rat Pack. I'm on my way to meet one of the most influential figures behind Las Vegas' emergence as the home of pioneering technology and the testing ground for much of the innovation that will sweep across sectors as diverse as retail and public sector over the coming years.

You want to know about RFID, or biometrics, or digital surveillance? This is the place to be. Technology here is cutting edge and has to be.

The scale and the profile of projects and the need for technology to deliver competitive advantage to publicly traded companies who exist under a constant spotlight means people such as Tim Stanley, CIO of Harrah's Entertainment, are in charge of shaping Las Vegas in the 21st century.

They may not be as famous as the men who shaped this city over the past 100 hundred years but they are no less important for that.

Asked whether he has the 'sexiest' of CIO jobs, Stanley struggles to pretend this might not be the case, out of deference to his peers.

"I see lots of other CIOs and there are people who are doing interesting things out there," he says before conceding with a wry smile that his probably is one of the coolest posts on the CIO circuit. And he's had a few.

"I worked in the airline industry and that's not a fun business," he said. "And in the automotive industry it's really not easy to get excited about what you do."

Stanley also passed through the doors at Intel and Kimberley-Clark. The biggest benefit of working in the casino industry, in Stanley's opinion, is that there is no other industry where the technology so closely meets consumer end-users and no other industry where the impact of IT on the business is so obvious and so integral to success.

Other CIOs often talk of an 'unsung hero' complex - a problem inherent in the fact that when IT works it goes unnoticed and it is only when it goes wrong that some organisations find out who their CIO is.

Despite being named one of 'The Top 25 Unsung Heroes of the Internet' by Interactive Week, Stanley claims this is far from the case within his own organisation.

"Nowhere is the tech closer to the customer," said Stanley. "What we do really matters."

"When I visit a property I still get a buzz from seeing customers enjoying what we do. There aren't many things you can do on the gaming floor which aren't underpinned by technology."

"I think one of the things which interests me most is that we're on the innovation side," said Stanley, discussing the challenge within his job to always find ways to make the business better, rather than finding ways to keep it stable or in steady operation.

Other awards on Stanley's mantelpiece include a place in ComputerWorld's 'Top 25 places to work in IT' and BusinessWeek's 'Websmart 50'.

By far the biggest tech challenge is that of managing CRM.

From the moment a customer checks in to the hotel or registers with the casino's loyalty scheme data relating to that individual becomes gold dust and is analysed and segmented in countless ways.

Stanley said: "250,000 customers come through our doors every day and to give each of them the sense of a personalised experience relies heavily upon technology."

So complex is the technological back end to the loyalty card schemes there's hardly an industry which hasn't come to Harrah's to find out how they do it.

And it's certainly proving popular. "Three years ago less than 60 per cent of visitors used our loyalty scheme, now it is well over 80 per cent."

Effective mailshots, marketing, hospitality and the tailoring of special offers all hinges on the data which is stored within the CRM systems. According to Nucleus Research, Harrah's CRM has delivered 389 per cent return on investment, year-on-year.

Stanley says effective CRM creates an environment in which customers feel valued and believe they are getting a tailored experience. "The technology really helps us create that 'I feel known' culture for our customers," he said.

"They might go to the Mirage to see the Volcano erupting or go to Steve Wynn's new place to see the flowers. They may even throw a few quarters into a machine while they are there but they will come back to Harrah's."

But CRM is nothing new. Certainly not compared to RFID chips or biometrics in terms of widespread consumer use.

Stanley's opinions on these two are mixed. They are cutting edge, they both offer benefits and, within the already controversial world of casinos, the hurdle of widespread consumer concerns about data and privacy are easier to overcome.

However, he's not convinced some other casinos aren't getting into a downward and costly spiral of buying technology for technology's sake.

Yes, the waitresses in his casinos are being RFID chipped. No, the chips played on the casino floor won't be, he says.

As for biometrics, while newly acquired Caesars Palace is using them to replace key cards for guests in its luxury Augustus Tower, Harrah's currently sees them as valid only in the back of house. In highly secure areas, such as the cages through which millions of dollars will pass each day, staff use biometric authorisation and identification but currently it ends with the staff.

Stanley holds graduate degrees in International Business and Technology Management from Thunderbird (American Graduate School of International Management) and Arizona State University. He also holds an undergraduate degree in engineering from the University of Washington.

One of the most common questions Stanley is asked is about the ways in which technology can help the casinos to catch cheats. This will be the subject of a separate article in this Special Report.