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Case Study

EventHospitality&Entertainment(ASX:EVT)

Head of Data Platforms & Engineering

Project Timeline

November 2019

Enterprise Data Architect Role

Joined Event Hospitality & Entertainment as Enterprise Data Architect, focusing on AWS infrastructure and data lake setup.

January 2020

AWS Infrastructure Setup

Established corporate AWS accounts with VPC peering, Matillion and Snowflake installation, and security policies.

March 2020

BI Quick Wins Project

Built top ten dashboards across Hotels and Corporate with KPIs for Revenue, COGS, Profit Margin, and Customer Sentiment.

June 2020

CEO 'HQ Rising Star' Award

Received recognition for being a 'Customer Focused, Unstoppable, Gnarly Problem solver, Supportive Challenger'.

July 2021

Promotion to Head of Data Platforms & Engineering

Promoted to lead data transformation initiatives and implement enterprise data strategy.

October 2021

Enterprise Data Strategy Development

Evaluated Deloitte's five-year IT Roadmap and developed Enterprise Data Strategy aligned with business goals.

January 2022

Enterprise Data Warehouse Implementation

Led migration of 18+ data sources to a unified, cloud-based Snowflake platform, reducing processing times by 80%.

June 2022

Enterprise BI Platform Launch

Deployed user-friendly Tableau dashboards with drill-down capabilities, enabling time-sensitive decision-making.

September 2022

Business Transformation Award

Runners Up for Business Transformation of the Year for the Hotels Dashboard Project.

March 2023

Telstra Marketing Collaboration

Supported joint marketing initiative offering movie tickets/food & beverage in exchange for Telstra points.

Project Overview

At Event Hospitality & Entertainment I owned the full data remit: Data Strategy, Data Platforms, Engineering & Operations, ITSM practices (Change, Incident, Problem, Request), Operational Continuity, SteerCo communications, vendor management, and CapEx/OpEx budgets across 75+ hotels, 74+ cinemas, and Thredbo Ski Resort spanning Australia and New Zealand. I evaluated Deloitte's five-year IT Roadmap and developed an Enterprise Data Strategy aligned with business goals — focusing on risk reduction (retiring a 12-year-old on-prem EDW running SQL-2000), enablement (greenfield cloud EDW and BI platform), and customer growth (NPS improvement and Single Customer View via a new CDP).

Over four years, the successful execution of this strategy transformed EVT into a data-driven organisation with 250+ daily active self-service business users. I delivered this including navigating pandemic uncertainties around funding, attrition, and scope changes — within the approved budget. All CapEx requests were prepared as formal memos to the CFO and CEO. I was recognised with the CEO 'HQ Rising Star' award in 2020 and as Business Transformation Runner-Up in 2022.

Key Achievements

  • Developed and executed Enterprise Data Strategy — transformed EVT into a data-driven organisation with 250+ daily active self-service business users over four years
  • Led migration of 18+ data sources (on-prem HQ, private cloud 5GN, AWS) to a unified Snowflake platform using Kimball methodology; reduced data ingestion and processing times by 80%
  • Deployed Enterprise BI platform with 36+ Tableau dashboards (Hotels, Cinemas, Thredbo); drove a 29% reduction in lost sales opportunities through transparent daily KPI tracking
  • Achieved $1.7M in documented cost savings through outsourcing and end-to-end Matillion CI/CD automation
  • Negotiated 10% Tableau discount, 8% Snowflake discount, and reduced vendor costs by 30% by challenging work estimates; finalised MSAs (with legal) and SOWs for on-shore and off-shore vendors
  • Enabled EVT–Telstra marketing partnership: data ingestion, processing and Tableau metrics reporting for movie ticket and F&B offer via Telstra points — enabling SLT to plan cross-sell and up-sell opportunities
  • Built Data Center of Excellence (CoE): Power BI training, AWS certification prep sessions, Snowflake and Informatica vendor training, Datathons, and data lineage/quality knowledge base
  • Ensured enterprise security via IAAA: RBAC, SAML, OpenID, MFA, password rotation, IP whitelisting, PI data masking, Azure AD SSO across all platforms
  • Won CEO 'HQ Rising Star' award [2020] and Business Transformation of the Year Runner-Up [2022]

Technologies Used

SnowflakeMatillion (CI/CD)Tableau OnlinePowerBIAWS (S3, Lambda, Glue, SageMaker)InformaticaAzure Active Directory (SSO/MFA)SAMLOpenIDRBACServiceNow (ITSM)JiraConfluenceKimball data modellingAgile/Scrum

Results & Impact

A trusted single source of truth integrating Finance, Sales, Marketing, Customer, and Operational data spanning seven years enabled data-driven decision-making across the enterprise. The BI platform gave business users near real-time visibility via drill-down Tableau dashboards, driving a 29% reduction in lost sales opportunities. Data ingestion times fell 80% and $1.7M was saved through automation and strategic outsourcing. The Telstra partnership data capability helped shape future cross-selling strategy at the SLT level. The CoE raised internal capability across the data function through structured training and knowledge sharing.

Want to Discuss This Further?

Happy to walk through the Enterprise Data Strategy, Snowflake architecture, award context, or the $1.7M savings story in more detail.

Shivendra Singh — Head of Data, Information & AI