Casino Enterprise Management

The Highest Hurdle in the Race for New Technology

By Kevin Parker and Andrea McCurry

When you took your first slot director or slot operations manager position, we bet you couldn’t have imagined the amount of work you’d have on a daily basis. Revenue projections, head counts, ownership and management concerns all vie for your attention while you juggle staffing headaches, budgetary limitations and updating floor infrastructure. In addition to all of this, you must ensure your casino is stocked with the best available products and that your floor is both pleasing and compelling enough to lure customers away from your competition and keep them coming back. But the work doesn’t end there.

With all the seemingly endless tasks already in front of you, there’s still the need to review new vendor product offerings that come through your doors. As you consider the benefits of adding that new technology that you’re sure will improve your bottom line, reduce staffing needs and fit into your budget, you know you’ll need to make a persuasive case to the general manager and finance officer if your hopes of deploying the new technology are to come to fruition. So, you make the presentation, get approval and spend long hours working with the IT director to ensure  the new technology is  compatible with the current facility infrastructure and work with the procurement staff to ensure you acquire all equipment necessary to deploy the innovation to the floor. After all this, you should be ready to place this new technology on your floor and make tons of money, right? 

The truth is, you are not even close. As an executive operator, you have several more hurdles to clear even after the new technology has been approved, like updating that damn procedure manual. Because we all know that when we add new technology to our casino floors, it’s also necessary to produce a system of technical and regulatory standards that govern its use. That means the old manual must become new again in order to meet the requirements of our auditors, regulators and management. It also means providing a simple-enough document that even the newest of our employees can understand. And that’s a tricky thing—auditors will dig their little heads in to ascertain valid and reliable information from the product, regulators will look closely to ensure the rules and regulations set forth by state and federal authorities are met, and lastly, management will demand a straightforward document that breaks down the product features to include operational guidelines. 

To read the full article, visit https://casinoenterprisemanagement.com/articles/february-2012/highest-hurdle-race-new-technology.