Data transformation To bring that vision to life Aiken has been working on a data transformation program – bringing data out of various silos and making it accessible and actionable. For the last three years the MCC has worked with Microsoft partner, data and analytics specialist Revenite. MCC looked at other warehouse offerings in the market, before identifying Microsoft’s Azure Data Warehouse as the best and most price-competitive solution for its needs. Revenite provisioned the warehouse for the MCC and set up Stream Analytics to allow data to be collected in near real time. Aiken’s plan is to migrate all the MCC’s data sets into its Azure Data Warehouse over the next one to three years. Catering, ticket sales, attendances, weather and event details have already been migrated and part of the CRM is also now migrated to the warehouse. Aiken explains; “What we're trying to do is bring science to decision making. We're obviously a very experienced organisation with lots of experience in management and people who've worked here for a long time. A lot of decision making was that sort of gut feeling based on history. “What we are trying to do is bring factual information into running our events. And then improve the customer experience. So, we're looking at ways that we can use all types of data sets to estimate the crowd better, not just estimate the crowd size, but also when they're going to turn up. So we have the right resources in the right place at the right time. “We want to try to be a bit more dynamic, have this sort of real time information flowing through so we can make decisions in real time. Rather than waiting for something to actually happen, we can start to predict that something's about to happen. So we want to become more predictive and more automated. That's kind of our overarching sort of strategy and the focus is on really trying to improve the customer experience, not just for the patrons, but also for the venue hirers, people who pay us to actually have their events here. The AFL are big beneficiaries of what we do.” One of the key projects underway now is MCC’s attendance prediction model. Using turnstile data from IoT sensors, the MCC collects data on patrons’ arrivals and attendance. This data and other variables are included in a predictive regression model to predict attendance, arrival patterns, members’ turn up rates and so forth. It’s proving very reliable – the delta between the model’s estimate and actual attendance is just 4.8 per cent on average. In the past, forecasts based on gut feel tended to be out by around 14 per cent. That increased accuracy helps the MCC with pre event planning, during event decision making and post event analysis. Data and IoT are also delivering significant savings. The MCC has installed IoT electricity run meters on major assets which have provided the intelligence to rein in annual electricity bills by $140,000. Aiken adds; “We are doing an IoT project with the Australian Sports Museum at the moment… putting some fisheye cameras in, so we can start to understand which exhibits in our new sports museum are being looked at and which ones aren't. Then we can make decisions around the flow of movement of the exhibits going forward. “We're also running a number of proof of concepts with asBuilt around using existing cameras to understand how many people are on the concourse at any one time. We count the queues, look at emergency management scenarios and obviously improve security as well”, says Aiken who has also worked with Quantum IT to explore how LiDAR sensors might be used at the MCG in the future.

Data and IoT kick goals at the MCG; hit a six for customer experience

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