Pulse

TransAct: Operational improvements more important than ever

By Lewis - 4 March 2021

With today’s stringent health and safety guidelines, it is critical casinos avoid crowds and maintain distance between guests. Tracey Chernay, SVP of Global Casino and Gaming at TransAct, tells G3 how Epicentral helps casinos with social distancing alongside a myriad of operational improvements.

How does Epicentral enable casinos and players to benefit from the delivery of real-time offers at the slot machine?

With Epicentral, the applications are endless. From moving players around the casino through to reducing lines at kiosks, Epicentral boasts numerous benefits for casinos and players by delivering messages and offers directly to players as they play at the slot.

Rather than walking into the casino and queueing at a kiosk, players can go straight to their favourite machine, put their money in, and start playing – receiving offers at the slot.

We have a large casino client in the US who has been using Epicentral for a number of years and they have just added another 2000 games onto the system to enable a whole other floor to avoid the kiosk. Given the reduced staffing levels in casinos today, operational improvements are increasingly important. We’re really happy to be able to help casinos out in this way.

How does the Epicentral software of today build and improve upon its previous versions? What is its added value?

Epicentral was originally launched in 2013 and a number of casinos have continued to use the system through the years. It’s a matter of continuously improving the system.

For example, in certain jurisdictions in the US you can give away free drinks. Rather than just gifting free drinks to everyone playing at a machine, Epicentral enables you to offer earned free drinks based on play, helping to control operational costs.

Epicentral is a different beast completely. Whilst previous versions had native apps running on PCs, this one is web-based so it can be run from anywhere. You don’t need programmes installed – Epicentral’s ease of use is unsurpassed. Over time, we have learned from our customers the features they are looking for and have taken suggestions from casinos about what else to add.

For example, providing the offer at the kiosk has been integrated with some of the systems’ providers to be able to have the player choose on screen which offers they would like to receive rather than have everyone receive the same promotion.

Epicentral allows for tiered offers. Depending on the tier of the player, they can receive different offers. It also allows for integration with any type of secondary screen to personalise the offer and further engage with players.

What is the purpose of the Design Centre module? Why is the customisation of promotional coupons important?

Design Centre gives casinos the power to design offers for players without support from TransAct so it’s 100 per cent in their hands. We also offer professional services that will do this for them, but most casinos prefer the ability to customise and design offers themselves.

With the Design Centre, you can design a promotion in the morning and have it active in the afternoon so it’s not a lengthy process. Design Centre also makes it easy for operators to use existing graphics.

For example, if a casino has a campaign across print advertising, billboards and media, they can pull the same group of graphics into the coupon to make the campaign seamless across all promotion channels. This enables marketing departments to reutilise digital assets quickly and easily.

How does the Campaign Centre module improve the management of promotions?

The Campaign Centre is a critical element of the system. It allows marketing and slots departments to test ideas about how a promotion’s criteria might work in operation.

In testing we have a feature called Stealth Mode that allows casinos to test a feature to see how many offers they would generate over a given period of time, without printing. It runs in the background to give a proforma for a promotion, enabling casinos to make decisions on whether to loosen or tighten the parameters of a promotion.

In Campaign Centre, you can also select promotion triggers. We have one operator who uses a trigger in their 55+ player age specific casino to reward and target specific player types. This refinement is really important because people like to be recognised for their play. Promotions are more effective when they can be tailored and refined.

How does the Report Centre module help businesses make better data-driven decisions?

Every business runs on data. The more targeted, the more useful the data. The Report Centre allows the casino to assess the success of a promotion and find out who the offers were delivered to, as well as their redemption rates.

You can look back at previous promotions and compare to a new one you are looking to put out. It enables the casino to assess results in real time.

In our most recent installation, we added a tablet into the system so that they could look at their reports on the fly on the casino floor. This has proven really effective for the casino to see exactly what the results are and make appropriate changes.

TransAct has also developed a second software solution in response to Covid-19. Could you tell me more about the solution and how the product has been received by operators?

Our second software solution, CLEAN2PLAY, is a result of our partnership with Acres. The solution builds on the Clean Machine they have implemented in casinos to ensure machines are clean before players come to play. It works with their dispatch system, adding in a ticket to certify a machine has been cleaned and giving further evidence to players it is safe to play.

CLEAN2PLAY has been well received considering the reduced number of games active on floors. I think CLEAN2PLAY will really take off when casinos open up again because people aren’t suddenly going to stop wanting to wear masks and clean machines.

Casinos are going to need technologies like this to encourage players to play and feel safe.

Are there other software solutions being developed or is Epicentral your centrepiece software system you will look to continue improving upon?

On both the casino gaming and restaurant solution side of the business we are very software focused. We developed the Software Center of Excellence in Las Vegas where we had previously outsourced software in the past. We brought it all in-house and doubled the size of our Las Vegas office for software development.

Whilst hardware is not going away anytime soon, it is important to be flexible and offer different software solutions and we continue to innovate on both sides of the business. It’s a requirement in today’s business world to offer a subscription model and this is particularly attractive to casinos because it allows them to know exactly what costs will be.