Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming September 2015 72 Tech Talk When the market was booming, Asia’s casinos were primarily focused on bringing in more players. Times are tough now, and they’re becoming increasingly concerned with optimizing the floor and retaining players. That’s starting to drive greater demand for JCM’s expanded portfolio of intelligent peripherals I t’s been a year since JCM Global announced the finalization of its acquisition of FutureLogic Inc in a deal worth US$70.6 million, and the benefits of merging one of the gaming industry’s leading suppliers of transaction technologies with its No. 1 printer manufacturer are steadily being realized. “This was the first full-scale acquisition for JCM,” says General Manager of New Business Development Kunal Mishra. “JCM has been a dominant force in bill validators and FutureLogic has been a dominant force in ticket printers. Now having one company in there we can look at the complete transaction and work with a partner. So that was very positive. But some of the things that happened after the merger even surprised us. “For example, as we acquired FutureLogic, our casino share increased to Opportunity in Adversity There’s absolutely no product overlap so that allowed us to not have to worry about the product roadmaps and immediately start focusing on the customers. And we were able to begin additional dialogs with customers from the baseline of ‘You’ve invested in either company or both companies’ brands, now here’s how we’re bringing more value.’ That’s where our new DNA comes in.” DNA, or Dynamic Network Applications, are bundled enhancement tools already incorporated in JCM’s flagship iVIZION bill validator that give it the potential to do much more for casinos than merely verifying and accepting banknotes and tickets. According to JCM, “DNA provides real-time health and event monitoring of all peripheral components used inside EGMs, on table games or inside redemption kiosks, utilizing either a wired or wireless connection to a local server. Peripherals that DNA can monitor are practically limitless and include bill validators, ticket printers, card readers, digital displays and coin acceptors.” “DNA is a highway connecting the peripherals and other devices to each other,” explains Mr Mishra. “When you supply both bill validators and printers you can create a customized package for the casino to be able to bring more value out of both products working together. Usually the bill validators are unaware of the existence of the ticket printer and vice versa. Now we can make them aware of the almost every casino in the Asia Pacific area and probably worldwide as well, because almost every casino has either JCM, or FutureLogic, or both products in there. “What that did was it allowed us to have deeper, more meaningful conversations with the casinos because they’re already invested in the combined companies’ technologies. They’ve invested the hard cost and the human capital, and now they’re looking to optimize the products. That allows us to further discuss our technology path regarding bill validators and printers with our operator clients “The other thing is that when you look at some mergers in any industry, they’re often overlapping technologies. When JCM acquired FutureLogic the technologies were entirely complementary. There’s no overlap between a bill validator and a printer even though it’s sold to the same person.