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BALLY’S SMARTPHONE APP


Smart thinking i


Phone is more than just a buzzword, it’s a way of life for many people. Smartphones have made communication 24/7, regardless of location. Bally saw the potential and has come up with something pretty special for the Greektown


casino in Michigan; Casino International caught up with Jeba Kingsley, Bally’s Senior Director of Technical and Professional services, to find out what’s what.


Casino International: You recently developed an application for smartphones for the Greektown casino in Michigan, USA. Is this the first app of its type that you’ve developed for a casino?


Jeba Kingsley: This is our first. We are in the


process of working with a couple of other properties, but Greektown was our first finished project of this type.


CI: How long have you been working on this?


JK: Arun’s [Yegappan, Senior Manager of Technical Information Services] team has been working on this for a couple of months to get everything ready; from a Greektown casino point of view, they wanted us to wait a little while so they could organise a party and promote it properly, so all in all it probably took just over three months.


CI: With a company like Bally, you’re a very


technology-driven company; did you develop this idea and take it to the casino, or did the customer come to you and ask you to make it?


JK: We took the idea to the customer. To explain, let me tell you a bit about our group. I’m in charge of technical and professional services for Bally, and we have about 65 people in that group, all over the world. We have people in India, the U.S.… all over. The main focus of our group is to provide services to our customers. Most of the casino-based companies have a


development group which might focus only on one product, on future releases. This means they are quick to jump on a new product. The way we work, of our 65 or so people, 80 percent of them are engineers, with either a Bachelor or a Master degree, and a background in development or functional consulting. Our focus is to install our products, and to customise our products to meet our customers’


72 NOVEMBER 2010


Bally Technologies recently unveiled an application that customers can use on their iPhones at the Greektown Casino in Michigan, USA. Casino International found out more about this groundbreaking application


need. Any changes to our product that need to be implemented do not go out to a development group; we take care of it. We also come up with new ideas, talk to our


customers and say, when we are in the field, we ask what their problems are. We then try to come up with a solution, and partner with the customer, and release a new product. We’ve released the iPhone app; we’ve also released BOSS [Beverage On System Services], where customers can order drinks from their slots; we have created Bally Mobile, where casino personnel can use a hand-held device to enroll a patron, create cards, all kinds of things. We create many products working with our customers. With Greektown, we felt, with Bally owning the data and with the explosion in mobile devices all over the world, and broadband becoming easily accessible for so many people, and the cost of smart phones coming down, that it was only a matter of time before someone developed this kind of thing for a casino. A casino tries so hard to communicate with its customers, through plasma displays, through the iVIEW™ and iVIEW Display Manager™ (DM) player- user-interfaces, they all try to provide information. But that information is really limited to when they are in the casino. We felt that the market is on the cusp of something big, where a casino can try to push information to its patrons, to their phones or iPads, or other tablet-style devices. So the customer can get all kinds of information and it won’t detract from their playing time or their leisure time in the casino. That was our intent. We actually created a prototype, with Arun learning


the product and working with his developers, taking the initiative. We came up with the design, took the prototype to the customer, and explained, this is what we plan to do, these are our aims. At the end of the meeting, Greektown authorised funding for the product; they also came up with a marketing strategy where they are going to give out a free iTouch with the app already uploaded to their top customers. We went and talked to three or four properties at the same time, but as soon as Greektown showed their interest, we focused very much on getting the product right for them. Then we make it into a Bally product and sell it to other customers.


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