Better BI: Boyne Resorts

Marketing staffers can view customer behavior patterns at each of the company's ski and golf resorts

 Boyne Resorts: Boyne marketers can click on pushpin icons to learn more about customer behavior, such as the number of visits made to a particular resort and how many nights visitors stayed.

Boyne Resorts: Boyne marketers can click on pushpin icons to learn more about customer behavior, such as the number of visits made to a particular resort and how many nights visitors stayed.

One of the perks of licensing the Pentaho BI suite, says Meister, is that Boyne didn't have to purchase any additional database servers or software to support it. The application and database components of the Pentaho system run on one of Pentaho's Windows 2003 servers, says Meister.

IDC analyst Dan Vesset says companies that attempt to marry BI and Web 2.0 technologies in mashups need to beware of the "wow" factor. "Companies that start deploying any of these technologies because they're cool and the latest thing to do aren't going to be successful," he says.

That doesn't appear to be a problem at Boyne. For example, when Meister put together a report on ski ticket sales last year, he uncovered a few "anomalies" that skewed some of the sales figures. Boyne ended up modifying a few of the business processes around how lift tickets are sold, says Meister.

That effort, along with sales and marketing opportunities that reports from the Pentaho system have delivered, has helped prove the value of the BI investment, he says.

"We haven't done an ROI analysis," says Meister, "but in my opinion, the system has paid for itself."

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.
Show Comments
[]