Business Objects Customers: Coral

Coral

"By consolidating on BusinessObjects XI, Coral has implemented a business intelligence platform that delivers essential day-to-day operational profitability analysis by shop, sport,and bet. Critically, it also provides a platform to support business demands for strategically aligned performance management reporting."

Tom Irving
Senior Project Manager
Coral

Challenge

Since deregulation, the gambling market in Great Britain has changed rapidly and is predicted to be worth over £10 billion by 2009 according to KPMG. Tracing its history back to 1926, Coral, a division of Gala Coral Group, is currently the fastest growing bookmarker in Great Britain, and rapid expansion has seen the betting shop estate increase from 860 to nearly 1,500 outlets over the past three years.

In October 2005, Gala Group and Coral Eurobet merged, creating one of the top 100 companies in the United Kingdom. To support and sustain the aggressive growth plan, Coral implemented a fully automated, financial business intelligence (BI) solution, based upon BusinessObjects™ version 5 from Business Objects, an SAP company, to replace its existing manual spreadsheet based data collection and analysis. This enabled Coral to evolve from a cash-based to settlement-based reporting structure and provided far more visibility into profitability by retail outlet, by sport, and by bet type.

Having attained a strong operational reporting platform, Coral then looked to extend its use of Business Objects technology to meet the strategic objectives of the Gala Coral Company. Tom Irving, senior project manager at Coral, explains, "Following the merger, Gala Coral defined clear strategic objectives for the performance of the retail estate. Consequently, there was a strong demand for performance management reporting and dashboards to support that new strategy."

Approach

Since the initial Business Objects project began four years ago, Coral's retail estate has doubled and the company now takes over 1 billion bets each year. The transaction-level reporting solution is based upon electronic point of sale (EPOS) data from the Alphameric in-store solution, which is polled overnight and loaded into a data warehouse. "The scale of the solution is significant, with up to 5 million records loaded into the data warehouse every day," Irving says.

To support the increasing scale of the financial BI solution, the strategic requirement for performance management, and a decision to use Web-based reporting to broaden user access to information, Coral opted to upgrade to BusinessObjects XI. Irving explains, "One of the key drivers was the functionality of BusinessObjects Web Intelligence®, which has enabled Coral to easily disseminate financial reports to a broader base of users. BusinessObjects XI is extremely easy to use and, critically, delivers the scalability required to support the planned growth of a further 200 shops this year alone."

During the smooth transition to BusinessObjects XI, Coral migrated over 50 reports to the new platform and developed many more directly in Web Intelligence. The company now plans to develop a performance management solution as well as add human resources and payroll information to the data warehouse.

Results

The transaction-level EPOS reporting provides Coral with unprecedented insight into the performance of the retail estate. Regional and operational managers now access daily reporting packs via Web Intelligence while upwards of 100 area managers receive a daily email with reports providing insight into the performance of their shops.

Irving confirms, "Managers across Coral now have confidence that the information is 100% accurate. Furthermore, the detailed reporting enables rapid identification of areas of under performance that, in the past, may have been hard to spot. This enables the company to prioritize attention more effectively to drive improvements in profitability." Benefits of the BI strategy include:

Retail Performance. Daily reports provide managers with insight into the profitability of individual shops including week-to-date and period-to-date activity. Each shop manager is responsible for managing risk, choosing which bets to accept and setting prices. By reporting on non-translated bets and large win bets, managers can rapidly identify any emerging profitability concerns with a specific shop.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Coral now tracks its KPIs, which include profitability on specific events and sport types, including golf, football, horse, and greyhound racing. The reporting also provides insight into like-for-like performance, including year-on-year, to demonstrate trends.
Security. Coral's auditors use the financial reporting to remotely audit shops at transaction level. Using BusinessObjects XI, the company can rapidly identify anomalies and undertake proactive security activity.
Performance Management. Using BusinessObjects Performance Manager, Coral will deliver a set of tailored dashboards and KPI reports to support strategic retail objectives.

"By consolidating on BusinessObjects XI, Coral has implemented a business intelligence platform that delivers essential day-to-day operational profitability analysis by shop, sport, and bet," says Irving. "Critically, it also provides a platform to support business demands for strategically aligned performance management reporting."

Irving concludes, "The investment in Business Objects business intelligence has delivered a return on investment within two years by improving Coral's understanding of profitability and supporting far more proactive security activity across the estate."

Customers in the Spotlight

Coral

Challenge

Approach

Results

Quick Facts