SPIELO INTERNATIONAL COVER STORY
continues to experience these shifts as we flow through the integration. The first change has been to remove duplication within the organisation. I don’t look at departments as such. I look at tasks, or projects. We had two different groups of people doing exactly the same thing in different parts of the world but perhaps for a different platform – but they were still doing the same thing. Our first goal was to eliminate duplication and bring everyone into a consistent and common framework. That released two things: cost, some of which we banked because it was from reduction of waste; and some we re-invested. And it’s also released resources. In most cases, we have redirected those resources so we can increase the number and quality of the things we are doing. There’s no point hiding behind this – our
organisation in the past few years, perhaps because of the limitations of each individual companies’ scale, might have been a little behind the pace when it came to technology development. In the last 18 months we have invested significantly to come back to a position of competitive relevance, and we’re now seeing that in our outcome. Our business and revenues are increasing, and we’re seeing results already.
CI: How does the new entity fit into the
Lottomatica Group? WB: The most important thing is that integration
has clearly defined the new company’s responsibilities and its position within the Lottomatica Group. If you go back down the trail of how SPIELO and ATRONIC became part of the group, it started with the acquisition of SPIELO, then separately, the acquisition of ATRONIC, by GTECH, which was then acquired by Lottomatica. It was unclear where the business sat because Lottomatica was primarily a lottery business operator, and GTECH was primarily a lottery service provider – so where did this business fit? By bringing the two businesses of ATRONIC and SPIELO together and creating that new scale, we have created a business that has a sense of real purpose within the group – it represents the group’s Gaming Division, from which we operate and serve some of the existing customers. We also serve and market to customers outside of the traditional lottery business, like casino operators. And we bring immediate solutions to the table; for example, in Italy just over a year ago, through SPIELO’s capabilities, and through the first steps of integration with the combined SPIELO- ATRONIC library, we
were the first into the new Italian VLT market in association with Lottomatica. We’ve created an identity and a purpose, which is why I describe SPIELO International as Lottomatica’s Gaming Division, and we have an identity in our own right now.
CI: Is this a complete sweep-out? Are the
ATRONIC and SPIELO names gone forever under the banner SPIELO International? WB: We don’t intend to remove the product brands; both SPIELO and ATRONIC brands will be retained in the marketplace. The creation of SPIELO International as our corporate identity was about giving a common, consistent name and identity to ourselves in the market. We’re like a Coca Cola, which has Coke, Fanta and Sprite – you have product brands, and those brands for us are SPIELO and ATRONIC.
CI: Is there going to be a merging of the two companies’ technologies? Presumably they each have differing strengths to bring to the merged company.
WB: Absolutely. We are moving to a common
technology platform, for both software and hardware. We’ve already moved toward combining our cabinets — we have a new range that is basically 80 per cent common and 20 per cent customisation, depending on the country to which we’re marketing. The goal is to eliminate duplication, as I said before, yet to maintain specialisation and focus for each market or segment in that last 20 per cent.
CI: Is there a company credo, an ideal or defining ethos that sums up the new company’s approach? WB: What we’ve said to our customers so far is that the biggest change they will see from this process – which, by the way, is a journey, a transformation, it doesn’t happen overnight – is that we are shifting from being a product-driven business to a content- driven business. By that, I mean that our success will be driven by the success of our games. Our major focus is to increase the emphasis on developing great content, with an innovative streak. The reason I say that is because we are up against some very large, successful organisations in the market, and sometimes to win you have to take a different approach – and that’s where innovation comes in.
OCTOBER 2011 35
“…sometimes to win you have to take a different approach – and that’s where innovation comes in”
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