VEGAS INC Magazine - Latest Las Vegas business news, features and commentaries about gaming, tourism, real estate and more
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/41819
4 A PUBLIC COMPANIES, MORE THAN 100 EMPLOYEES Brent Cromley Senior Director of Engineering Zappos.com Brent Cromley has a resume chock full of enough IT names and titles to make a non-techie's eyes glaze over: senior manager, Plumtree Software; director of application development, RubiconSoft; engineering manager, Microsoft Corp.; lead engineer, mBED Software; senior engineer, Oracle Corp.; and a bachelor's degree in computer science from Dartmouth. The 41-year-old Cromley, who is in charge of custom software development and leads a 90-person team, has been heading up Zappos' largest tech project–an integration with the Amazon back-end warehouse fulfillment software system. "What we're doing is integrating our web site into the Amazon fulfillment network (Zappos was acquired by Amazon about two years ago for $807 million)," he says. "This project is going to allow us to ship product out of the entire Amazon network. Our shoes, our clothes, everything we ship now out of one fulfillment center will now be able to come out of any fulfillment center that Amazon has. It allows us to reach a wider audience. We'll be able to get product to customers faster because there will be locally distributed warehouses, and actually not at launch but soon after internationally, as well." The change means customers will get their shoes faster in a much larger distribution network. Just recently–the initiative launched in May–Zappos rebuilt its entire merchandising/purchase-order system from scratch. As Cromley recalls, when the company first began, "it was just a few people–merchandisers, tech folks–in a room, all together. As we have gotten bigger and bigger we now have a merchandising department of almost 400 people, and they needed a new purchasing system that was going to meet the needs of a much larger group. There is integrated work flow, there is more advanced analytics; it's a much more sophisticated system." How much of what Cromley has accomplished is simply putting in man hours, and how much of it is innovation? "I'd say it's a little bit of both," he suggests. "We just put together a mobile team, which is really going to try and push new areas of online shopping. I have also put together a team in San Francisco that is dedicated to building out new prototype shopping experiences. We had tried to keep mobile as part of our main web site, and work on it on the side. We decided it was such a critical aspect of the business that we just took some people out and said, 'All right, you're working full time on mobile now, that's all you're going to do.'" And 2012? "We've got a couple of threads right now with social shopping," Cromley reports, "making shopping online much more social, interacting with your friends, people getting feedback on what they're buying in real time. That's our next 'big thing.' " — Howard Riell NONPROFIT Peter DeRaedt President Gaming Standards Association As an engineer in Cape Town, South Africa, Peter DeRaedt devoted himself to perfecting projects such as robot control for traffic lights. He often worked until 4 a.m. to gain a competitive edge over the designs of larger corporations. Everything changed when he returned to his home country, Belgium, in 1986–and met an American who introduced him to the gaming industry. He's been envisioning a new direction for gaming ever since. "That was the beginning of a lot of fun," DeRaedt recalls. "And now I'm a nationalized American. That's how life works–in strange ways. The innovative spirit and passion I've always had, no matter what I do, allowed me to flourish in an industry that at that time didn't embrace technology." DeRaedt has focused on innovating technologies, inspiring seemingly difficult collaborations within a highly competitive industry, helping casinos to build relationships with customers, and instituting the industry standards that make it all possible. His career accomplishments range from running TCS UK's Systems Division, to helping establish Aristocrat's R&D Center in Tucson, Ariz., as VP of Technology. And, since October 2002, he's served as president of the Gaming Standards Association, an international nonprofit trade association that has spearheaded the standardization effort. He's also been credited with playing a leading role in GSA's development of groundbreaking, award- winning global protocols. "It's about creating revenue," he explains. "And understanding your customers is number one. To do that, you need to get more information. And to do that, you need standards. Standards are a wealth of information, not only from a gaming device but throughout multiple properties around the world. It's important to understand your customer as he travels." It boils down to giving a customer what they want, when they want it. It often happens via multi-game slot machines and terminals that uniformly recognize the player's card–and therefore, loyalty, preferences and favorite products. Standards make it possible to fashion an experience that DeRaedt compares to traveling around the world on a major airline. "You feel immediately recognized. If the player is gambling and loses money, why not award him once he's spent a certain amount? Why not offer his favorite food or a free bottle of wine? As you collect more information about his preferences, you can offer him what he really wants." And, relationships with customers don't begin and end at the slot machines. As DeRaedt points out, "a 'player' these days is not necessarily a gambler who spends $1,000 on the floor. I could go to a restaurant and spend $5,000 on a nice bottle of wine. Am I therefore less valuable to a casino? No." Moreover, he sees his work with GSA as a remedy for the disjointed relationship that can happen when vendors build products without understanding what operators want. "It's been a long road to building consensus," says DeRaedt. But the journey has been a highlight of his career–along with fueling the spark of innovation that's overtaken gaming. "I like to make a difference–but not for myself. Bringing new technology and innovation to this exciting industry is for me the most rewarding thing." — Gina Rose DiGiovanna