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A new generation of gaming platforms
Ales Gornjec, Business Development Manager (Gaming) for HERMES Softlab explains the requirements for the new generation of gaming platforms and the obstacles they face
Many would believe that the online and land-based gaming worlds are so different in approach and execution that they have very little to teach each other when it comes to the technology they each employ. Such a viewpoint would be utterly wrong.
In our many discussions with both sides of the industry over recent years it has become ever more apparent in particular that there might be a call for a new generation of gaming platforms, integrating both land-based and online casinos on the same platform, which set us at HERMES SoftLab thinking immediately about what the possible obstacles to this new generation of gaming platforms could possibly be and how we could get to overcoming these obstacles on behalf of our customers?
We believed ourselves to be well-placed for this task. We are an international company providing IT solutions and software engineering services, serving high-tech vendors, telecommunication service providers, financial institutions and the public sector.
Complementing the strong software development background with IT integration services and solutions, we offer leading edge expertise in the areas of storage management software, embedded systems, network systems management, e-solutions and customised application development and application modernisation. Our task for an integrated system for land-based and online gaming was still no mean feat, however, no matter what our IT bona fides. The complications of how both the online and the land-based industries have grown, and how their technical and management requirements have grown with them, means that there were layers of complications to confront.
For a start, many companies in both sectors of the industry have grown through acquisitions. There are numerous examples, of sports-betting operators buying poker operators, of land-based casino companies buying online casinos, of online casino operators buying up poker assets, or vice verse, of bingo operations being added to Sportsbooks, and of Sportsbooks being added to casino platforms. A plethora of deals, in fact, and one which the software and technology behind the companies in question has struggled to cope with and adapt to.
The second problem has been around as long as there have been casinos. Land-based operators have added systems as they have gone along. Covering all aspects of the business, from front of house to backend, but none of them truly integrated or even designed to be integrated.
As an example; a casino hotel operation will often have systems covering the gaming aspect of the business, and then a completely different set of systems for the hotel part and neither of them integrated in any meaningful sense. Throw in possible online complications and the scale of the problem becomes clearer.
Now this situation could probably carry on forever if it wasn’t for one extremely salient fact – the service levels expected by the customers are forever changing, and in order for casino and hotel operators to continue to keep their existing customer base happy, and even more importantly in order for the operator to attract new customers, the backend software systems need to be relied upon more and more.
Yet to do this kind of management needs more information than their legacy systems are able to provide. Often barely coping with the workload as it is, the un-integrated systems found in the ‘computer rooms’ of many operators simply aren’t built for today’s trading environment. Truly useful business intelligence will drive businesses forward, giving them the tools to compete and thrive. But if your systems simply can’t provide the information needed, then that business intelligence will never be good enough to give management a chance.
This was the start of our journey towards offering our customers what they truly needed: an integrated system worthy of their growing businesses. We looked at the problem from the point of view of our customers. We know from our discussions that what they needed first of all were systems that were more agile and more responsive to the business environment. This is even more, true now than when the discussions were first undergone.
Importantly, this agility isn’t just for its own sake. What also emerged from our discussions with operators across both online and land-based was that integrated systems were a must have – they would provide the backbone that would allow operators to provide the entertainment their customers demanded. It was only by providing top-notch service, without a hitch, that customers would be enticed to come back for more. Whatever business you are in, repeat business is all. This is even more so with gambling businesses where the danger is that you take too much from your customers, providing them with a poor experience which they will not want to repeat, at least not with your business. After all, the only thing worse than losing a customer, is losing a customer to one of your rivals.
From our point of view, and from the point of view of our customers, once you understand your businesses better, it will help you manage your businesses better. So to facilitate all these requirements we came up with the technical requirements of the new generation of gaming platform that would be needed to cover both the land-based and the online areas of the business.
All the features were organised in terms of the benefits to each stakeholder in the process. First there are the direct benefits for the players. We needed a single-user experience across all the channels, from land-based EGM to the internet to mobile. This experience had to encompass similar lobby and game selection feel and look, with the same content crossing across the land/online divide. This would make the customer feel more comfortable and at home with both products, giving them a sense of security and familiarity.
Then importantly we need a single wallet across all the channels. The importance of this cannot be underestimated. Without the ability to move their cash around between land-based and online, it meant that all the work on look and feel could well be wasted completely.
Then there are the more obvious entertainment aspects for the players, including the enhanced multi-player gaming experience, including such features as chat, across all channels. Functionality is important, but entertainment is central to the propositions of our customers and so our new integrated system had to have this concept at its heart.
The benefits needed by the casino/operator stakeholder are probably more obvious but they need stating all the same. First, the integrated system would need to provide a single view of the customer. This could be the same user of the land-based casino, the online offering or the hotel customer. This would lead to enhanced customer relationship management (CRM) possibilities, allowing the operator to understand the habits and spending patterns of the customer, putting them squarely in the sights of the marketing offering. After all, once you know what games entice a customer, both in a casino or online, when they play them and for how long, it makes the job of enhancing their experience so that they come back for more that much easier.
The single view of the customer obviously leads to a single point of administration. All content channels can be tied in, leaving the operator with a holistic view of each and every customer through the doors or the website. Just as important, though, is that an integrated platform offers the possibilities of offering a wide array of content. Games from multiple vendors and suppliers can be added or subtracted depending on choice. To aid this process, the integrated platform should obviously also be open source, in order to facilitate and enable the additional content from a multiplicity of providers without having to buy proprietary platforms from each and every supplier. Lastly, but vitally, the integrated system should also be standard based, as specified by new GSA standards and S2S/G2S supported.
This then was the challenge, and this is what HERMES SoftLab has delivered. If ever the proof was in the pudding, then it is with our integrated systems. As a quality-driven organisation we combine a strong domain expertise and leadership in key technologies with proven excellence in delivery to guarantee fast, flexible, risk free and cost effective solutions to our customers. We have a blue-chip level of development expertise and attention to detail. This gives our clients the opportunity to use key technological resources, such as software design and development teams, and proven business processes which decrease time-to-market, increase operational flexibility and reduce risk.
