Concentra + Sega + Alteryx

SEGA Games Co., Ltd. is one of the biggest influencers in the multibillion-dollar global video games industry. To stay at the top of its own game, SEGA relies heavily on data to drive operations forward and improve the customer gaming experience.

SEGA Europe’s IT data Team is responsible for developing solutions that democratise data to regional groups and video game development units, empowering analysts to transform SEGA into a data-driven enterprise.

The Challenge

Until recently, promotional mailshots were sent to email lists that had been collected over time. Customers often received irrelevant content, so unsubscribe rates were high and hit rates low. To address this, the team wanted to manage multiple datasets including gameplay data, customer histories, marketing, and financial insights to improve analysis and reporting. The team implemented Amazon Web Services (AWS) to extract live data from game titles as they’re being played. To take this a step further, they wanted to link to other sales and gameplay data that was spread across numerous sources.

“This link would bring all the pieces of a customer’s lifecycle together, allowing us to create personalised promotions based on play habits and sales history,” explains Felix Baker, Data Architect and Head of IT Data Team, SEGA Europe. “With Alteryx, the IT Data Team is liberated to focus on gaining more customer insight”

Baker recognised that creating this link would be complex. Other teams within SEGA were successfully using Alteryx to gain insights into data from sales partners. Baker approached Alteryx who introduced him to the business analytics and modelling company Concentra.

Concentra is a SaaS company with software and services that enable businesses to capture, manage, and analyse data to improve operations and execute strategies more effectively. They have partnered with Alteryx to develop advanced self-service analytic solutions across diverse data sets for five years, and were awarded Alteryx EMEA partner of the year in 2017 and 2019.

Using Alteryx, Concentra quickly accessed and prepped data to test hypotheses and influencing factors. Analyses now range from high-level dashboards that let business users monitor KPIs to deeper analyses for examining more complex questions such as game balancing – the process by which developers pace game actions and set difficulty levels – and the user experience. “Without Concentra, it would have taken a lot of time and money to reach this point. We knew we were working with Alteryx experts who have in-depth platform knowledge,” says Baker.

Why Alteryx + Concentra

50% of SEGA players now have a personalised customer account record

SEGA aims to push this to 90% of players which will produce a powerful CRM.

Targeted marketing via personalised promotions is now a reality

Increased hit rates and revenues with Alteryx, SEGA can now make correlations between customer purchasing and play behaviour, increasing hit rates and revenues.

Data mapping tasks now run automatically

With Alteryx, the IT Data Team is liberated to focus on gaining more customer insights.