CASINO MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS As with any IT project, an important early step So a casino management system has to be as secure


and accurate as the technology that the customer more directly experiences. It may not be responsible for actual game payouts, but it is very often the system that specifies the rules by which loyalty bonuses are won, for example.


Why do it? There are many reasons for deploying a casino


management system and not all sites will have the same requirements or need every possible management service. So vendors both major and minor tend to offer suites of software modules rather than single monolithic applications.


Konami says it has 99.98 per cent uptime, which translates to less than 20 seconds of downtime per day


It would be possible to construct a casino


management system by mixing multiple vendors’ products, but this is likely to cause unnecessary headaches for the IT department in persuading them to talk to each other; most casinos opt for a single- vendor approach, at least to cover gaming, although other suppliers will probably need to be involved in providing systems for separate operations such as a hotel. (For news of how collaboration between the gaming and hospitality technology sectors could make it easier for these systems to talk to one another, see our box on pX.)


Drowning in data


How much information is enough – or, put another way, how much is too much? Casinos generate a vast amount of the stuff. Take, for example, the management system from Greece’s


HTR, which monitors not only gaming but also other transactions at locations such as reception and bar. Every hour, the report for each table will include: whether it wins or shows a loss, the previous hour’s


win, the difference, drop, opening, fills, current float, and win percentage. For slots, the manager is given all this data for each machine: win, handle, drop, jackpots paid, hopper


fill, actual and theoretical win percentages, and games played. They can see this not only for individual machines but also for groups selected by denomination, type or location.


At reception, meanwhile, the software even alerts staff if an arriving member has a birthday. Only the individual casino can decide whether this is exactly the information that it needs. But too much


reporting could be overwhelming if the casino management system is not carefully designed, and lead to staff wasting hours of their time trying to comprehend statistics that are not especially relevant to the essentials of the business. It’s important, therefore, that when the system is specified, close attention is given to how the information is presented – and what is left out – as well as to what’s collected.


OCTOBER 2010 31 Fine-sounding ambitions. But how can they be


realised in practice? Konami, a major vendor of casino management systems, gives some examples. A system which recognises individual customers (through loyalty cards or similar identifiers) can respond instantly with a playing experience tailored to their interests; this should result in more play. Promotions, both personalised and more broadly targeted, can help achieve the same end and also cross-sell other services such as food and beverage, hotel, shows and so on. All in all, says Konami, sites rolling out an effective casino management system should start to see a return on investment (ROI) within three to six months.


This depends, of course, on identifying the


potential business advantages quite precisely as well as in broad terms. The giant IT services company Infosys, one of several from outside the specialist gaming technology sector that has been involved with casino management systems, cites the example of a client – a large chain with more than 40 sites – that decided it specifically wanted to enable customers to use rewards freely across any of its properties, and also to monitor how redemption at different sites affected their profitability.


The solution involved both customer-facing and


toward deploying a casino management system is to define the desired business benefits. One supplier, Future Gaming, has summed these up from a bottom- line perspective: the system will help management to increase playing activity, attract new players, monitor performance of individual players and slots (in other words, identify the most profitable), keep track of cash, and make accounting more efficient.


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