Dramatically improved issue detection and response times
Baba Entertainment can respond 90% faster than before to systems issues by using data visualization and machine learning powered by Elastic.
Increased sales with real-time testing insights
Sales increased 15% by applying data gathered from real-time customer A/B testing using Elastic Enterprise Search dashboards.
Aligned technology with company growth
As Baba’s business has grown, it has migrated its Elastic implementation to Elastic Cloud for flexible scalability, offloaded maintenance, and increased security and support.
Baba Entertainment is a fast-growing online gaming company founded in 2015 by five friends who wanted to create compelling, cutting-edge, and fun social games. Today, more than a million people around the world play Baba Wild Slots games through web browsers or iOS and Android apps.
When Baba Entertainment started, the company struggled to find a cost-effective way to monitor the performance of its game systems, marketing operations, and sales. The company lacked the function, knowledge, and budget to stay on top of these critical analytics. The company needed tools that would not only help monitor the economy of its games, maintain game quality, and maximize marketing in a competitive industry.
Growing with a winning solution
The team then tested Elastic Cloud Managed service against competitors, and discovered Elastic’s built-in data visualization and analysis dashboards. They immediately realized the impact it would have on their business and upgraded to Elastic Cloud within their AWS environment. "It was amazing! Suddenly we had a view into what was happening with our systems. The Elastic dashboards opened up a new world for us and we couldn't have grown without them," says Frankel.
With Elastic, the technology lets you grow as your budget grows. Moving to Elastic Cloud was a game-changer as it offloads IT management. We’re not an IT company, we’re a gaming company. Now if there’s an issue, Elastic can help.
Custom data dashboards help boost sales and customer service
Baba now relies on several custom Elastic dashboards to monitor gaming and marketing operations. The company uses dashboards to display error logs, compare the results of A/B testing, and check the performance of different customer notifications.
One dashboard analyzes sales and marketing data, such as promotions or marketing campaigns, in real-time to help teams make more informed business decisions. "For instance, if we see that revenue is lower this week than last, we can look into where to tweak our marketing efforts," says Frankel.
An essential calculation in the online gaming world is the return to player (RTP), which is defined as the sum of wins divided by the sum of bets. Baba uses an Elastic dashboard and machine learning to aggregate billions of events into a weekly RTP report.
"RTP is a standard gaming industry value. In Las Vegas, the return to player is around 92-96%, so we are trying to fit the standard," says Frankel. "If our Elastic data shows a higher return than expected, we receive an alert and can investigate to determine what needs to be adjusted to realign the RTP."
If a customer has an issue, the Discover feature in Elastic Enterprise Search analytics allows the company’s support team to check all slot events and start resolving the problem as quickly as possible.
Elastic enables us to monitor the performance of our game systems. We can search and analyze data related to large ongoing events, such as RTP, or small one-time events, such as a login issue for a user. With Elastic, we’re keeping gaming operations balanced, which is good for us and for our players.
Improving response times for better business
Overall, Elastic helps Baba ensure the stability of its games and their economics—quickly, easily, and in real-time. "If there is a bug in some of our virtual slot machines, we're losing players and we’re losing money," says Frankel. "Elastic gives us the tools to constantly monitor and immediately address issues."
Elastic and its dashboards have helped us respond 90% faster to issues with our game system economy that could damage our business. We also have a 90% faster response time to errors. It’s incredible.
They also frequently test their environments to optimize customer click rates. Real-time Elastic Enterprise Search data collection and analysis allows the company to determine winning offers quickly, improving sales by 15% in one test. The company also has dashboards logging QA complaints. Not only do the dashboards identify issues before they affect a large number of customers, but developers can use the data to troubleshoot bugs.
Expanding the use of Elastic company-wide
While marketing, support, and development teams already use Elastic Enterprise Search, their goal is to train all employees, including non-technical ones, on Elastic.
Giving employees the ability to learn on their own is huge. The Elastic dashboards are usable for everyone. No previous experience with the tools or the data is needed. It takes 10 or 15 minutes tops to learn them.
Frankel says he recommends Elastic to any company that wants its employees to be able to dive into data, not only for the power of Elastic Enterprise Search but also the strong assistance from Elastic Support. "It’s always a pleasure to work with the Elastic team," says Frankel. "They consistently deliver on their SLAs and resolve our issues thoughtfully."
We were selected as the fifth fastest-growing company in Israel in the last five years. Using Elastic has given us the insights that we need to power that growth.
