Ever notice how often or un-often your casino changes their slot machine floor? Every casino has a different slot director that can influence the gaming floor layout, themes, holds, etc. as frequently as they desire. These changes are more complicated than what a player would think. URComped CEO, Craig Shacklett, interviews Casino Data Imaging’s Product Manager, Adam Winkler, to gain more knowledge about the strategies used on the slot machine floor and how Casino Data Imaging comes into play. Listen to podcast version.
Topics discussed include:
– Who determines the slot floor layout
– How Casino Data Imaging increases efficiency
– Types of recommendations and their impact (ex: cost-cutting)
– Determining which slot machines perform better
– How often do new themes fail
– Slot machine holds and analytics
– Amount of money going through the slot floors
(0:00-0:37) Craig Shacklett: Hi everybody, Craig Shacklett here with URComped and Trio CRM. And I have got a special interview today. We’re going to be scratching the surface and actually more than that. Diving in an area. I’ve always been curious about, but I don’t really know anything about. So, forgive my ignorance during this interview. I’ve got Adam Winkler he is the Product Manager at Casino Data Imaging. And you guys work with a lot of casinos helping them optimize their slot floor. Is that right?
(0:37-0:51) Adam Winkler: Yeah. Some of it is optimization and some of its just really understanding what’s happening. Yeah, we do work for the analytic side with casinos or like other gaming institutions.
(0:51-1:34) CS: I was trying to think of like an analogy or a comparison with the slot floor. And I think it’s like a buffet like there’s clearly logic to it. But I never really thought enough… Somebody explain, “They put the proteins at the end because they want you to fill up your plate with the cheap stuff.” And they’re not spending so much money. And I, “Oh Okay.” Once I heard that it all made sense. Slot floor its clear a lot of thought put into it, but I don’t have any idea where to even begin. The highest level. Is there kind of one overarching everybody follows this strategy and it just varies based on the size of the casino floor? Are there different kinds of schools of thought on how you could lay out a slot floor? How’s that work?
(1:34-3:30) AW: Yes, there is one overall strategy in that. There are all the strategies. Because I worked… So it’s… to kind of give you an example that… Like one of my old bosses, her example of floor strategy for slot machines. It supplies for tables to some degree as well. Like in the US are about 800 casinos. And she said that “There are 800 different ideas and views of how to layout your floor.” There really is no broad consensus in general. Some try to go for ease of use. Build to get around. Others try to funnel people to certain directions. Some of them are really focused on what you can see across the floor. So somebody is at one entrance, they can look across and find something they’re looking for. And others are trying to have groupings and things that kind of get people’s interest there. There are so many different perspectives. And there’s nothing that people have fully really just settled on. That’s why you go to casino. And one casino is very different from the other because it’s just different people work there. And who generally determines the layout of the slot floor? The slot director. They’re kind of an interesting role. They have to take care of essentially everything for the floor. And that’s kind of the idea about before the slot director. Because usually there’s a… There’s a person who’s just responsible for the gaming for in total. And then there’s a group who’s responsible for the slots and then for the tables. That’s generally how it goes. And the electronic table games, the ETG’s. Those are the table games that are kind of turned into a slot machine. So you can see it. You can have like a simulated version of all the different slot machine or table games. That actually goes into the slot side, not the table.
(3:30-3:34) CS: Got it. So they press it. Press the button. The bubble crap.
(3:34-3:48) AW: Yes. Exactly. So that goes under the slot responsibility. And from the slot guys, they’re the ones who essentially set the floor for the slots. And then, they have those general area for the table’s.
(3:48-4:00) CS: And so if there’s turnover in a slot director position. Is it kind of like a new head coach coming into a football team and he just relays. Puts a new strat…
(4:00-4:03) AW: 100% it will always change.
(4:03-4:42) CS: Let’s get into your software. Because on the website it’s casinodataimaging.com And you guys can see some screenshots. We kind of reach out. We connected because of TRIO CRM our new product. All Casino software touches each other at some point whether directly or indirectly. We reach out start a conversation on your website. You get some really cool screenshots of a casino floor, and different colors, and different machines. What does your… Like the main product, What does it do? What does it look like and how does it kind of fit in with this overall helping slot director run their operations?
(4:42-7:54) AW: It’s really just an analytics piece. It gives the people who run the casino’s gaming component at least a view of their floor. So, it’s everything from a dashboard to reports. To a 3D model their floor with the machines kind of illuminated in different ways. And then data can be overlaid as well as can pull reports and things like that. It’s integrated with both. The slot data, the table data, and the player data. So you kind of get a full view of the gaming side. And the reason it exists is because there are quite a few different accounting systems available. Mostly the law that major slot manufacturers. So you have the ones from IGT, from Psy Games, Aristocrat, Konami, etc And then there are some other third parties out there too. But the issue is that their accounting systems. They’re all really focused on regulatory and accounting requirements. Because they are so… They are very complicated. Because you have all these different jurisdictions throughout the US. And then you also have international ones too. And they all have very specific requirements that have to be met. And then you also have the financial requirements for public reporting as well as just general financial views. In all those programs are very focused on hitting those minimum objectives. And they’re really hard to keep up on. So to have a program in a… Program that can actually go to all these different jurisdictions and meet those requirements. Both from a regulatory and financial perspective. It’s a tremendous amount of work just to keep the product up and meet all those different needs. We fit in between where… We’re not trying to have those regulatory requirements. We’re just there for operational perspective. So if you’re running the floor, you’re like, “What am I even doing here?” What is performing well? What isn’t? Because your view is…You may not be looking at the machines from a… Trying to do the financial metrics on individual machines. You may be more focused on how are certain types of games playing or certain titles doing. And how they done over time. And how are they doing rolling 12 months and all. These are things that don’t necessarily into you would really care about from a regulator perspective or you wouldn’t care about from a financial perspective. But if you’re just trying to optimize your floor you really care. And the data, you need to have a way that’s easily found because they are extremely busy. They’re very busy. Very understaffed. And so they try to… They need to get this information. And if they have to pull from the accounting system, they absolutely can. It’s just a lot of work. And trying to get that information can be a real hassle. From a technical perspective and just time-consuming. So if we have something that is easily… That already consumes it and puts in a way that is useful for their decision-making process. It just saves them a ton of time and allows them not just to meet the minimum requirements but then they can do some investigation like, “Hmm, why is this doing well or doing poorly? Who’s playing it? How do they play that type of thing?” So you have a lot of flexibility there. So that’s where we fit in.
(7:54-8:36) CS: That’s really interesting. Totally make sense. Because I know… Not that I’ve seen how these particular accounting machine spit out data, but I’ve seen excel spreadsheets,right? Unless you start putting into the right pivot table or the right chart. The data just doesn’t jump out. You can’t do anything with it. There’s thousands of thousands of rows Unless you’re Rain man or something. You’re not gonna get something from it. So what you guys do is… I’m just going to kind of spit it back out. Because I’m coming from outside and I want to make sure I understand it. So you take all these. All these disparate systems. All this data and then put it maybe it’s a slot floor map like I saw and there’s probably some other cool dashboards where they can actually make action out of that.
(8:36-8:39) AW: That’s exactly it.
(8:39-8:52) CS: Does your software… Casino Data Imaging. Does it also provide recommendations or is it more, “Hey, here’s all the tools. Now, you have all the information you need. You determine what to do.”
(8:52-11:27) AW: We do have some recommendations. And that is a… You want to go down that road into giving it. Specific recommendations and guidance. That one is a very complicated one that we’re just kind of slowly going in because this is… And that’s a big part of why you’ll see a lot of outsiders come into the industry and try to radically change it. In terms of you know from the analytics viewpoint. And that makes total sense because that kind of perspective has changed. In most industries. Their speed at which they want to change is so fast. That oftentimes it’s not taking into account. They can’t account for just the realities of that environment. We do give some recommendations. And it’s just kind of a strategic process where we have a plan to kind of build them in a way that works well for what their needs are. And then helps kind of build confidence and what’s being recommended because there are a lot out there and they make some really wild claims. And no one has really been able to back them up. Because it’s just not the same environment as the internet, or like a grocery store, or anything else that uses a lot of analytics. It’s a different perspective both from a regulatory perspective with the data that they can pull out through the granularity of the information that they have. And the speed that they can actually do test. The testing environment is very different than anything else. Like, if you want to make a change to a slot machine. All is dependent on the jurisdiction you’re in. So sometimes you can make a change very quickly and easily. For other ones, you have to make a submission to the regulatory body. They have to get approval all that. And then, when you actually make a change you have to have sometimes one person can be… Actually, make the change the slot machine. Sometimes you have up to five people there. You have to have audit. You have to have the tax. You have to have usually security. Somebody from the regulatory agency. It can kind of depend on the environment. You have all these people there and sometimes you have to turn the machine off for a while. So you can’t just go and rapidly do A/B testing. It has to be… And it’s very costly in making any of these adjustments. So testing and recommendations, you have to be very incremental. And incrementalism is the absolute story for change within the casino industry 100%. That’s the case for how they’ve changed from a financial perspective. And also how they’ve changed regulatory wise as well. Everything is just a very slow and gradual process.
(11:27-12:01) CS: That makes a lot of sense. And I can see why recommendations would be so tough. One, because the data… If you’re looking the data’s… Its historical data, it’s tough to project something. Especially in Industry where you… Like I said, there’s 800 different slot floor. 800 different casinos have 800 different layouts and to take into account. The blueprint of the floor, the market, everything. I’d imagine it’s very tough to automate that. Like you really… A consultant can come in and make recommendations. But tough to build it in the software I’d imagine.
(12:01-13:46) AW: Yeah. We have to have a huge amount of confidence in people too in what is being recommended. So imagine you go to somebody’s you’re making a recommendation. You make it two different recommendations. One of them you’re saying, “Okay, if you do this recommendation you will make an additional 3%.” Then you’re like, “Oh, 3% who really cares.” Well, 3% is huge. The amount of money that goes to use places is gigantic and we can talk about that. But if you make the recommendation, they’re like, “Okay” But there’s no real proof if you make that change. That that’s specifically had any impact to performance. Because the floor you have these natural undulations over time. You have different events going on. You have to casino… You have restaurants opening and closing. You may have different sporting events. It’s very hard when you look backwards just to pull that piece out. And you can do that from a statistical perspective. But it always has a lot of expectations. So that is recommendation A. Like, “I’m going to make you more money.” Recommendation B-, “I’m going to save you expenses.” “Oh well, expenses. I can sink my teeth into that. because I can see that as it happens. I know how much I spend right now. And if you can decrease that. Well, that’s not subject to any of that fluctuation.” So I can feel… I can have real confidence and what that is. And I can see the literal effect of that. So that’s why there is real trepidation for improvement perspective. In terms of additional revenue but for cost savings. That those get accepted and they get understood very easily by everybody.
(13:46-13:49) CS: Because there’s so many fewer variables that could…
(13:49-14:03) AW: So many fewer variables, you can really tangibly see it. You don’t have to imagine another world. Another scenario where you didn’t make these changes and do a comparison between them. You don’t have to have any of that theoretical side.
(14:03-14:08) CS: So what would be an example of a cost-cutting recommendation in this area?
(14:08-14:23) AW: You have the big one for the industry. And that would be when everybody went from tokens to the tickets. The ticket process in and out. You worked in operations, you said?
(14:23-14:28) CS: No, I was on the marketing side. So I admired operations from afar.
(14:28-14:32) AW: Were you there during the coins day? The days of coins.
(14:32-14:42) CS: I think… I was 2006 to 2008. And there may have been a couple of machines that still weren’t TITO, but now it’s pretty… I think that ship has already sailed.
(14:42-16:40) AW: Okay. Well, TITO changed everything. But before that, people… Every time there was a drop. And the dropped for anybody here. A drop is just when you go pick up the money the cash out of the slot machines. And so they’d be wheeling around. And they had had these huge carts. And they would have thousands of pounds of coins to be pulling out. And they have to wheel them over to freight elevator to haul them up. I mean, it was a huge like just… Just trying to manage that process was a real monster. But if you had it when you were able to come in and say, “Hey, you can get rid of almost all that work. All you have to do is just pick up the cash. Just the bills.” Life was so much easier. Drop was a lot faster. It didn’t create all the manpower requirements. It was a lot easier. You could count it much more quickly. You didn’t have to wash all that stuff. You didn’t have to have your own coin system. You don’t have to have any these specific tokens to your site. You have all these things. All you could get rid of. And all you need to do is put the bill validators in. Potentially switch out your slot machines. That was a no-brainer because it was very easy to follow. In the similar process, kind of goes from that to now. They’re going cashless in some locations. They start with mag-cards. The magnetic cards where you got a very specific card that you could attach and put into the machine. It was similar to a credit card which is kind of a little different. That caught on really well like in South Africa. Now they’re starting to go into the idea that you can just take your cellphone and attach it. And just have a mobile wallet like that. That’s starting to make a different change from another financial perspective. But that’s all cost-related. So if you’re able to handle those costs. You can incrementally change the industry much easier than you can do from additional revenue perspective.
(16:40-16:55) CS: So when somebody brings in Casino Data Imaging. They have all these new dashboards, the map. So now, all of a sudden their eyes are open and they can see everything. What are some of the big AHA’s that you normally see?
(16:55-19:25) AW: First, it’s just trying to manage and save their time. If you’re pulling your data from the accounting system, well, oftentimes you to make a lot of changes. So I felt like I am in the… Like an analytic side of both casinos and other industries. And it is such a slug to pull the data in. To clean it, to organize it, to put a different presentation, and then do your analysis. It takes quite a long time. And if we can automate some of those things. Just one thing you can do and save an operator for is like the slot director. They may spend a couple days building a report every month like two to three days. Just going through this process. Doing the extracts, working with their business intelligence people to do. To go into a SQL and pull the data, and specific manner. It’s just a real hassle. And if we can just have a report that is just automatically sent over to the email address. That just sent in their box. They had to spend zero time on. That first off saves a ton of time and effort. And then after that, the steps that you can you can go through is having a better understanding of how your force performing. So you can go, “Hmm. I’m starting to notice. This guy is starting to underperform.” And then we put in things like trending. So if you have a low performer, but it’s starting to go up. “Oh, I maybe… I want to keep this particular one.” Or if you have a high performer and its starting to go down you need to go, “Hmm. I need to start planning to make these changes.” And that is very important because that process I was talking about of changing slot machines. Changing a theme can take 45 days. It can take 90 days. They can take a lot of places. It can take you even longer from the moment that you make a decision to actually making the change. You have to order the theme. You have to… You have to make that decision. You order the theme with with the slot manufacturer. You receive it in your warehouse. You sometimes have a regulatory process to approve that was correct. And then you have to do all the planning. That actually make the change from before. So it takes such a long time and real costs associated with it. The more you can plan that out. Get the expectation in advance the better. And the less time you have think or sit on your floor. Just kind of wallowing at the very bottom because everybody’s either tired of the theme or it’s no good or. The hold is too high or something like that.
(19:25-19:47) CS: So that’s where the trending. So the trending is… Sounds like a really key feature because especially when it’s on a map you’re able to see if something… Is it generally one machine or is it an area of the floor? Or what does that kind of look like? When do the red flags starts going off that, “Hey, we got a 90-day window. Let’s start the process now of switching this out.”
(19:47-21:17) AW: It’s both but from a good casino mindset. It’s really about you have zones. Which are just different areas in your floor because you have areas that are going to be hotter. Because they’re near the entrances or by the gaming… By the tables or near the bar. Somthing like that. You have cold ones where sometimes it’s like… It’s an expansion that you had in the casino. And it’s kind of, “Oh, you get to go over a bridge and down in this way.” And it’s kind of really octave side and just doesn’t really perform very well. So you have that, but then you also have individual like slot machines and themes. So a lot of it is theme analysis. Like a normal process that you go through as an operator most… Every period that you do analysis like monthly. Typically you rank all your themes top to bottom you take a look at your top ones you say, “Hmm, should I put more of these on the floor not?” And you look your bottom ones you’re like, “Which is the garbage? Which should I take out today?” And then you do that. And then if you have any leftover. Ones that your bottom ones you took out and replaced with your top performers. You have any that didn’t you go, “Hmm. Well, I think I should get some new themes on the floor. So you call up that manufacture like, “Hey, what theme should I get?” They’re like, “Oh, you should get boundless Buffalo.” “Okay, great. Well then, I’ll take two boundless buffaloes.” And that’s kind of how… That is the very basic part of pretty much a process everybody goes through.
(21:17-21:28) CS: Got it. So then they replaced and all of a sudden they see the trend is going up on those new machines and then the old all of a sudden start going down maybe.
(21:28-21:29) AW: Hopefully.
(21:30-21:31) CS: Yeah.
(21:31-21:32) AW: That’s your goal.
(21:32-21:44) CS: How often do people are… How often there’s a new theme come out? And everyones’s like, “Ah, here it comes. It’s gonna be fire.” And then it’s just… It’s a dud. Does that happen very often?
(21:44-22:12) AW: All the time. All the time. There are… I think everybody is very familiar with Netflix and all that these days. How often do new shows come out? All the time. Hundreds of… Just constant new shows or new movies. But how often does one really like enter… Like the general consciousness? Not that often. And that type is really similar.
(22:12-22:17) CS: Yeah… like slot machine? I can’t believe that.
(22:17-22:22) AW: Yeah. So we will actually. That would not be a shock.
(22:22-22:40) CS: I know. You said, “Carole Baskin come and eat her husband in the…” So you obviously are expo… You see a lot of casinos… What are some commonly held misconceptions do you think between that maybe operators or players have? What do you see out there?
(22:40-25:22) AW: Well, you were just asking about like… From the operative perspective. You see the theme on the floor, you see the revenue shoot up. Well, one of the beliefs that people kind of think about from the operator’s perspective. And that kind of really a lot of ways can hold them back is the idea of a… Just a limited wallet. So you say, “No matter what I do on the floor. Somebody is only going to spend… Let’s say, a hundred bucks.” They spend a hundred bucks whether I have garbage themes. As long as I already have. That’s good enough to get And get them to come in. Or I have all the latest themes. Yeah, themes. The idea that they’re only going to spend this much. This is all they have. And this is what’s going to happen. And so that can be really difficult… Just trying to manage it. Like if you think it’s just a static amount of money that you’re going to get. It can really cause a lot of hesitancy in making any changes. So it’s very easy for your floor to kind of get stale. But that’s actually not the reality. We’ve done our fair share of tests. And like… To some degree some A/B tests of… Different changes on the floor. From hold, theme selection, to organization and structure. Like what machine is near another that type of thing. Old acting kind of… Can actually drive additional revenue for the individual players. But I would say that is one of the top things to really hold people back from slot manufacture. Slot management perspective about really getting the most out of floor. Just holding I’m saying. There’s only so much I can go in. But from the other side, from the player side, there’s a strong belief that if you were doing well in the theme or a machine that the operator will go change what’s happening. So they all like tighten it up midplay. And that just can’t happen. There are a few pieces technology where they can’t… An operator can update a machine remotely without having somebody actually go to the machine. key it off and make some adjustments, but even those. And there aren’t many of those and that’s not many machines. Not many locations, but even that you cannot happen midplay. It’s from a regulatory perspective just not allowed. So it can happen in between play like in between a session. So somebody fully cashes out in the machine. Just sits fallow for a while. And then, there could be a trigger. But then you’d see the machine actually shut down and come back up and all that. So there is nothing hidden like that. If people think that a casino, or the operators, or the manufacturers are against the players and that is just not the case all.
(25:22-26:07) CS: I remember a study. I think this is when I worked at Harrah’s. Which is now Caesars of course, but it’s either when I worked there or right after I left. But Gary Loveman, the CEO said, “Hey, we did studies and you actually change the whole percentage of a game and players just don’t notice.” Obviously that players didn’t like hearing that. So, is that true? Is that backed up? I mean, do you think that if you got a popular theme casino decides to increase the hold percentage? Does revenue go up like people… The coin in doesn’t go down. People will just lose money faster? Or do people notice small percentages and small changes in hold percentage and stop playing accordingly?
(26:07-28:14) AW: Well, it is definitely true in certain circumstances. So I did get involved with some tests on that where if you make a small change the hold, just like a couple tenths of a percent. So if you’re hold was let’s say, 10%. Which is high internationally, but pretty reasonable in the US. Particularly for Penny machines for instance. In those circumstances like tightening up a little bit just a couple tenths of a percentage. Really tends to go unnoticed because from a… That suit, that $20 playtest. You put a twenty-dollar bill in and just kind of see what happens. The normal fluctuations of a game is so… There’s so dramatic on their own that a small adjustment to the hold really is not going to have much of an effect on that individual session. But if you have a lot of different play, that can be different. But it depends on the type of players. So if you’re talking about adjusting the whole percent for poker. That has a dramatic effect on players. Partly, because when you go to a poker game… An easy one to talk about is IGT because they have the most of the floor. But they all have a list of like the payoffs for the different types of game, the different hands. And you can see based off the payoff that implies what the hold is. So a Savy poker player which is most of them. They’ll go over the slot machine. They’re like, “Nope. I’m not touching this guy.” And they’ll look another one. They’re like, “Yes, that one has what I’m looking for.” So it really depends on the audience. And speaking of Harrah’s. They’re kind of interesting because they’re notorious for being very their… Harrah’s and MGM as a whole just being well aware of like hold percentages and how to set them. And have them kind of regionalized as well. For certain environments, it would be higher. In certain environments, it would be lower. They were pretty crafty when it came to that. In fact, they’re really on top of things. Yeah, I can imagine.
(28:14-28:50) CS: And the locals Market they’d wanna have a lower hold because people want a lot of time. Maybe on the strip right by the entrance. There’s aren’t machines. You necessarily want to play. If you want a long time on a machine. So with that Casino Data Imaging, are there any other… So we talked about seeing trends and getting some new insight into optimizing the floor helping you see the winners that you want to add more to your floor. And the dogs you want to take off. Any other unexpected benefits that operator see from the Casino Data Imaging?
(28:50-30:24) AW: Well, we kind of have a real broad approach when it comes to the data. Because we also have… Some aspects of this are focused on the historical. So the audited data. So after audits already gone through it and they certified it. It’s a financial perspective and trying to get that insight. How would she lay on my floor? Also what makes sense. So some of it is just a financial perspective of those top-bottom themes. And some of it is also about the layout. We have the maps and so you can organize a floor you can do little tasks of setting up. And also you can see how the players migrate over time. So you kind of get this different perspective of what is actually occurring. And that is actually really very critical because these floors can be huge. The average a slot director has 1600 slot machines they have to manage. That is pretty significant and they have very little help. Most guys have one analyst if they’re lucky. And so they have to make all those decisions on their own. And one person for all that is really tough. Not to be on the spot… You certainly know from working in with Harrah’s and such. But like the amount of both a handle and also just gross win that comes from the slot machines is gigantic. Yep. And I think far more than most people expect.
(30:24-30:51) CS: Yeah, I was at Harrah’s Tahoe. And slots were definitely more than 50% of revenue. And yeah. It was a huge revenue driver and it was a high margin. Lower volatility in the sense that it wouldn’t… Some kind of whale would come in and all of a sudden win a few million dollars. It’s generally… Slots were the stable cash cow. Yeah. I mean, it’s incredibly valuable.
(30:51-33:46) AW: Well, to kind of give some perspective here. A couple of years ago, I did an analysis of looking at one of the major publicly traded companies, that itemized their revenue for the different locations. Both US International and they had a lot of locations over in Macau and such. Which is that places… Really bananas. Like really really crazy the amount of money that goes through there. But we put them all together just for the slots. The amount that gross revenue they were getting was the same as two NBA not just teams but all the teams. So you took all the gross revenue from all those the NBA teams and you doubled it. They had more from slots. So the amount of money going through these places is just you look at it you go. Like one of the properties… I just pulled some data shortly before this. The slot handle for one site in… This is 2018. So it’s not kind of corrupted by 2019. That was like 4.8 billion dollars in slot handle. But their gross win was about 307 million just off of that. And then, this is just their… Their Las Vegas location. One location in Asia. This is Asia’s typically considered very low in slots. Yep. Because compared to their tables they are… Slots are nothing compared to tables over there, but slots compared in there compared to here. So huge. So this one location they had fourteen and a half-billion dollars in handle. So that… in handle, for anyone that Is not familiar. Handles, just the anything that you’ve wagered. So if you put a dollar into a slot machine, but then you get right back that doesn’t count. But you put a dollar in and then you bet. That’s a handle. And their whole percent was about four and a half percent. So in just this one location. They were making 656 million dollars gross. Gross. Which is gross. Yeah. It’s a staggering amount. That’s one location there and one location here. Wow. So imagine you are responsible for that and it was just as you because I know that one location over in Vegas. I know that the people responsible… Imagine, it’s just you alone have to make decisions on this. Floor that, you’re getting 4.8 billion dollars in wagering every year on. And the revenue that you’re responsible for the… to bring back to the operations is over 300 million dollars. You’ve got to get that right. It’s you and one guy who just got in college. Good luck.
(33:46-33:47) CS: Good luck.
(33:47-33:54) AW: You Have to manage… All the repairs you have to manage the hosting. You have to handle all that. Good luck.
(33:54-34:33) CS: And like you said though it’s a lot of times, “Short-staffed, underfunded. It’s just “here go and make money.” So when you are selling into a property, is it… There’s a cost to your product. It’s like, “Hey, listen we have seen operators increase revenue by x percent and we helped us get… Like how do you… Because there’s clearly ROI. And you’re freeing up time. I’m just curious what is kind of the… What gets them to agree to free up some budget to bring in a new product when it is a department that’s so often underfunded and understaffed?
(34:33-36:33) AW: For this… products. You know as well, but for this particular product, it’s really just about like them being underwater. You have all the responsibilities. You have to do all this reporting. But it is so time-consuming. And if I can go in and see the time and allow them to potentially start answering the questions that they have you known us in a timely manner. That goes a long ways because imagine your… Before without this, you’re like, “Hmm. Where do these types of players play?” And you’re like, “Okay. Let me tell my… ask my business analyst.” And business analysts like, “I will get that answer for you next month.” You just be ready for that. And they’re like, “Great. I guess I’m going to wing it from then until now. But if you could get it instantly by yourself. Well, shoot that goes a long ways. Plus if I can help you answer some of the data questions that you need. Just like curiosity questions as well as the day-to-day questions very quickly about what things are performing, underperforming, how they doing over time. Specifically playing them and how much free play is going for these different things. And such I can start giving you these answers that were very hard and cumbersome to come up with but I can do it right away. That goes a long ways. Now, we certainly have arguments we can make about additional revenue and such. But that can be a very person-specific type of conversation because again, it can be so hard to prove legitimately. Because you have case studies. You’re like, “Oh, I’ve done this elsewhere. But am I gonna be doing it for you?” Well, I guess we can do some professional services and do an analysis. And I’ll tell you after you’ve already signed up for this. To really help you out. Placemaking a lot of assumptions. So if I can actually find a way that I can specifically save them money. Then that one’s a lot easier. But this other additional revenue, that tough. That’s really tough.
(36:33-36:51) CS: I know you guys don’t have a lot of turnovers. So that must once you’ve gotten a few accounts. And they’ve been with us for years. That speaks volumes too. If it was like you sign up a hundred and ninety-nine didn’t sign up the next year. Then, you have a lot harder time selling it.
(36:51-38:12) AW: Yeah. Well, we try to be really responsive. So we do as much on-demand training as they want. We keep making new reports. We keep up and make sure that the system is up and running. Because you certainly would know this. An IT background or back end is always a house of cards. Like when it comes to data. Because you’re pulling in from all these different locations. You’re trying to store it away. You’re shuffling elsewhere. There are so many points of failure. And if you have… So it takes a lot of maintenance to keep that up and running, and consistent. And that’s partly what we do our best to help out and work with our IT. Make sure that it is there and running. We do what we need to. So it’s not… Certainly, not a passive experience of we sell it. And then we’re like, “Let’s rake in this money.” It’s really about like… That’s the start of a relationship. And we’re constantly working with them to both assist and make sure that the product works well, but we’re constantly giving them updates, and upgrades that are either specific to their requirements. Like they want a specific type of report or it’s a change that we’ve added in elsewhere…, The different feature set and then we’re shuffling it over to them as well. Nice. So that combination of things that helps keep customers.
(38:12-38:30) CS: Well, Adam. I appreciate you putting up with my many many questions. This was super interesting to me. I feel like I got a master’s in slot operations and slot floor layout because like I said, “I was pretty clueless going into this.” So I really appreciate you spend some time and educating me and our listeners and viewers.
(38:30-38:55) AW: Oh sure. Hey, man, there’s so much in this industry which is really really wild. So everything from the interesting stories of how it came up to the more mundane ones about the regulatory perspective or the finance but it’s a very interesting industry that kind of really can peak a lot of people’s interests. So anytime. I’m happy to help up.
(38:55-39:03) CS: We’ll have to do it again. And if somebody wants to get a hold of you talk about Casino Data Imaging or just talk about slot strategy and stuff. How can they get a hold of you?
(39:03-39:11) AW: Our website, casinodataimaging.com is probably the best path to follow. And then, we’re always going to be available.
(39:11-39:21) CS: Well, Adam. Thank you again. We will do this again soon. I’m sure I’ll think about like 20 questions when we end this. And so we’ll schedule another one in a quarter or two.
(39:21-39:23) AW: Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me. It’s a real pleasure.
(39:23-39:28) CS: Thanks, Adam.
