Simon Liddle talks to Matteo Monteverdi, GTECH’s senior vice president for i-gaming and Americas interactive, about how technology has influenced the company’s growth.
GTECH has become one of the biggest names in online gaming but keeping pace with an industry that can evolve at a startling rate remains a constant challenge for any business.
The company’s senior vice president for i-gaming and Americas interactive, Matteo Monterverdi, tells iNTERGAMINGi about technology’s role in GTECH’s history – and future.
SL: How has your company’s interactive systems offering developed over the years?
MM: “We can trace GTECH’s interactive systems offering back to the late 1990s and the casino and poker software developed by Boss Media, which GTECH later acquired. The associated back-office systems were in the mould of game management systems (GMSs); their primary function to set up and manage the gaming offering presented to players. At the time it was the norm for operators to run games on multiple GMSs and to use ad hoc data warehouse systems in an attempt to align player information generated from multiple databases. However, results were not always as positive as they could have been.
“Today, the majority of operators offer a full range of online product verticals while standalone GMSs simply are no longer good enough. Instead, an overarching player account management platform is required to give operators a single view of the player across all products and channels. GTECH has developed its own cutting-edge Player Account Management product. A key factor in the market is the ability to cross-sell and upsell games, and this is only possible with a consistent, real-time 360-degree view of the player.
“Another major industry change over the past 15 to 20 years has been the evolution of regulatory frameworks that govern the sector. In parallel, GTECH PAM continues to evolve in order to meet changing regulatory demands across various jurisdictions. Gaming systems need to be modified to meet revised regulations. “The flexibility of GTECH´s PAM platform means we are able to achieve that with minimum disruption to our existing customers.”
What influenced those changes the most and what are currently the biggest requirements from operators?
“The constantly changing nature of online gaming has influenced the need for feature-rich player account management platforms. As cost-per-acquisition has increased over the years, it has become increasingly important for operators to drive greater yields from their existing player base, through cross-selling activities between products (e.g. sportsbook and casino) and channels (e.g. web and mobile). The main barriers to effective cross-selling include players having to move money between multiple wallets, campaigns and marketing messages being sent out by separate business units without a common view of the player, and not monitoring player behaviour or tracking the player journey.
Read the full article in the latest issue of iNTERGAMINGi.
