Insight
GLI EUROPE INTERVIEW John van Schaijk
right now,” describes John. “When I started here at GLI, our workload was skewed 20 per cent towards i-gaming and 80 per cent was land based. However, in the last year, the balance is now 50/50. Is that because land-based has slowed or fallen back? No - it’s because i- gaming has accelerated to match it. If you look at the opening of new jurisdictions in the last few years, Spain, Denmark, Romania and now Portugal, we see all those opportunities in combination with ISS (Information Security Services) and our increasing work in the lotteries sectors, which means that there’s still massive opportunities for the growth of GLI Europe. i-gaming has shown that technology is driving the gaming sector right now and we’re seeing ever increasing product complexity as a result. Tis level of complexity means that rather than just engaging with a client at the end of the product development cycle, we’re supporting clients at the outset, conducting workshops and looking at new developments both in terms of technology and regulation. We see lots of great products that won’t launch because they were created in isolation. At GLI, we bring our expertise to the process at the earliest possible stage to help our clients get to where they want to go.”
Having regional teams working seamlessly together on complex multi-national projects is testament to the management skills of the GLI Europe team, though they do get a little help
from technology here too. Te implementation of JIRA, a networking software solution referenced across the interviews we conducted with GLI, has enabled the technical teams and their clients to keep abreast of the approvals procedure at every single stage of the process. John explains: “We implemented JIRA a little over two years ago. Before then, if a client presented us with a product we would run our tests and revert with any issues via a phone call or email. JIRA changed all that.”
JIRA is fundamentally a job tracking system that’s networked between the client and each of the different teams within GLI working on the project. Comments can be added and tracked by each member of the network, whether that’s the compliance team, the client or the technical managers - every touch point is tracked, logged and can be viewed in real-time. It’s a brilliant, transparent and efficient way to manage the approvals process and is just one of the tools GLI uses to involve clients at every stage, as communication is such an important part of the path through the certification process. “Another tool we use is called Evolution, which, in a nutshell, allows us to easily transfer clients between jurisdictions,” explains John. “If, for example, we test a product for the first time in the US, but the ultimate plan is to progress to Europe, to Holland, Switzerland and Sweden, then we run the test script for those jurisdictions, automating the approvals process.
It’s another example of the added value service clients receive when they use GLI as their test lab.”
In a price-sensitive, highly competitive market, product testing is a balance between value-for- money and value-added services. Getting the balance right is key for GLI in providing realistic expectations and meeting them.
In dealing with long-term clients, the boundaries are known to all parties and GLI has relationships with some of the biggest names in gaming going back decades, but working with new clients is both tricky and exciting. “Te first time is always the most complicated part,” agrees John. “You’re looking to figure out not only the product, but understand the inner workings of the organisation. To achieve this, you need that connection to the client to be very quick in providing answers and adept in determining the priorities. It’s especially important in the igaming sector, which is very fast moving and dynamic, whereby priorities are changing overnight to reflect the real-time opportunities in the marketplace. We recently retitled our account staff, changing their titles to client services managers, reflecting the fact that the role is more than simply selling. It’s about establishing a relationship with the client, understanding their business inside and out to ensure we manage the product certification process very precisely, because when we
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