Insight INTERVIEW Trevor Croker
technology into the industry. Today that’s simply not the case. Gaining access to technology and having the people skilled in engineering and hardware to wring the potential from it is absolutely core for us. It’s about harnessing the energy within the organisation – exposing our people to ideas from many different sources and giving them the tools, including technology, to go and see what they can do.
How can Aristocrat protect its core business in the future while at the same time continue to scale in the digital sector?
I don’t think we need to especially protect the core business. We need to grow all parts of our business, and we believe that we’ve shown over the last few years that we can do this and that certainly remains our goal.
What are your most important strategic priorities for Aristocrat over the next three years, and what can you tell us about the ‘centres of excellence’ that are to open around the world?
Te key priorities are to continue to grow our core, expand into adjacencies, make sure that we lead and respond to hardware trends, and continue to invest in our people culture. Tose are the hallmarks of our strategy. How does that translate into centres of excellence? We see ourselves increasingly as a global company. We have incredibly talented people in many parts of the world. I think of centres of excellence as a way that we organise our business to get maximum benefit from our global employee base. We get the best talent that we can in the locations that people want to work in – for example, we have a lot of technology talent in India, San Francisco, Austin and Sydney, Vegas or Reno. Ten we make sure those teams and people are collaborating closely on shared deliverables, so we are leveraging that talent globally, as opposed to creating siloed teams existing in single geographies.
Where has the recent flurry of M&A activity left both the industry and Aristocrat’s position within it? And will see more organic growth in future or do the demands of new technology mean that acquisitions are more likely?
M&A goes though cycles. We’ve seen a cycle of consolidation and I think in land-based it’s slowed. Digital is still ongoing although there are probably fewer large deals to be done at this point in the cycle. Nevertheless, Aristocrat is always in the M&A space, proactively looking for the right opportunities for our business. It’s not about what deals are out there, but what are the right M&A deals. We’re not deal junkies. We’ve shown this with our successful acquisitions of VGT and Product Madness, that have been strongly accretive and strategically beneficial. We continue to stay close to the market and we assess opportunities all the time, on the basis of our rigorous criteria. And we are
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