Business Intelligence Software keeps Centrebet on top of its game

As Glenn McGrath carves up England's top order in the cricket, business intelligence software in Australia will be deciding what punters who back his performances will win.

At online sports betting agency, Centrebet, software will track who is betting, how much they're winning and what the odds should be for the next game.

Established in 1992 in the Northern Territory, Centrebet began offering online sports betting services to punters worldwide in 1996. It now offers odds on about 4000 sporting events each week.

Tracking the odds
Each day Centrebet handles about 50,000 bets on anything from cricket and tennis to soccer and polo. Its 260,000 clients generate annual revenue of about $1 billion.

Keeping track of such a vast array of transactions, some involving large amounts of money is no easy task. Choosing the wrong odds or losing too many customers to a rival could spell financial disaster.

"It would be impossible to run the company without a business intelligence system," Centrebet Business Intelligence Manager Rodney Marwick says.

Everything from bookmaking to marketing to risk analysis and forward planning relies on the information the system provides, he says.

Extending business intelligence
In 2003, Centrebet selected the SAS®9 platform as the basis of its business intelligence architecture. Since then it has upgraded and extended the system to support activities across the company.

Each day, the software analyses every sport, competition and result together with the types of bets that have been placed.

Activity is examined to determine the percentage of wins and the profit margins.

"If a bookmaker specializes in tennis, for example, they can drill down and see which competitions, tournaments and matches were completed the previous day, what people bet on and how well they did," Marwick says.

The BI tools are used by the marketing department to fine-tune campaigns to encourage clients to join and use the online service. Marwick says e-mail campaigns can be tracked to determine how many people respond, when they come to the site and whether they place a bet.

"Every week we run a client profiling system, which looks at each sport a client bets on and how well they do. Some clients may do well on some sports and not on others, which is important information for the bookmakers to know when they take a bet."

The 'wow' factor
Risk analysis is critical to ensure Centrebet does not find itself too exposed to losses in specific areas. Such monitoring would be difficult, if not impossible, without the software.

Each day the system automatically sends a summary of the day's financial performance to senior executives. It can be set to issue automatic alerts should certain events occur.

"You get a wow factor when you provide this sort of information to people who have not had it before", Marwick says.

It saves people days of time. They used to put data into spreadsheets and then used manual manipulation to find answers.

"Now they have access with just a couple of button clicks."

The SAS BI software is helping Centrebet to fine-tune its web site which generates more than 95 percent of its business.

Marwick says the tools allow traffic through the site to be analyzed to tell whether people are navigating it easily or changes need to be made.

The company can find out how people arrived at the site, if they used a search engine, and the search terms used.

"It's a very competitive market and there tends to be a lot of churn, particularly among smaller punters," Marwick says. "If we can monitor this we can attract people with targeted offers."

Back to Success Stories

This article was written for the Australian newspaper by Ian Grayson. It appeared in the publication on the 26th July, 2005.