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CASINO MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS


Mission control A


As land-based casinos expand into online and mobile, how can they track and engage with the same customers across multiple channels? Barnaby Page looks at some of the latest developments in casino management systems.


re you making the most of your games, and your customers? It’s the question that’s constantly on every casino manager’s mind (or ought to be): fully exploiting the investments that have


been committed, not only in technology but also in marketing, can make all the difference between profitability and failure.


That’s where another investment – in a casino management system – pays off. Typically these systems combine sophisticated reporting, for the back office and gaming floor staff alike, with player- facing services such as bonusing, messaging and loyalty programmes. And increasingly their focus is on providing what vendors like to call a “single view”, not only of the business as a whole, but also of individual players, who today may very well be engaging with a casino online or via their phones as well as in a land-based venue.


Holland Casino, for example, is engaged in a big


project called Mosaic which seeks to link together the management systems of its 14 properties across the Netherlands, which collectively attract 5.5m customers annually. It is working with International Game Technology (IGT) to integrate membership and loyalty systems, far more powerful if they operate across the whole estate than if they were limited to single locations, as well as improving support for coinless gaming, creating more efficient operations, and building in responsible gaming safeguards.


Yet of course today’s casino operator is very often offering gaming beyond the walls of its physical properties, and it’s here – in the merging of land- based, Internet-based, and mobile activities – that much development work in casino management systems is taking place at the moment.


As the Maryland Live! Casino prepares to open next


year, for example, it will also be offering a play-for-fun virtual casino three months before the real thing opens its doors in June. Providing customers with Poker, slots and skill games, this will serve to build


28 NOVEMBER 2011


the Maryland Live! brand and, crucially, players registered on the online service will be identified as such by the casino management system too.


With the virtual casino driven by Aristocrat


Technologies’ nLive system, Maryland Live! will then connect online and land-based player profiles using the vendor’s nLiveLink technology. Player activity will be trackable across both the real and virtual properties, and customers will be able to earn reward points online.


As long as land-based gaming continues to represent enormous revenue streams and investment levels, there is never-ending scope to fine-tune casino management


Based on GameAccount Network’s e-gaming


system, nLive – also ordered by Island Resort & Casino in Harris, Michigan – is so far limited to brand-building exercises, but Aristocrat frankly admits that the system is also going to market in anticipation of legalised online gaming in the US. When that happens, the company believes, demand for interconnected land-based and Internet-based systems will explode.


Indeed, that extends to individual games as well as


to player management; Aristocrat foresees a near future where, through its Alive network, customers will be able to continue playing on a land-based casino’s games even from home. Though they won’t, at least under current US law, be able to stake or win money, they will be able to build up player points and unlock new levels in episodic games – and for the casino itself, of course, there’s the all-important continued contact with the brand, as well as opportunities for messaging to consumers and for


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