As casinos across the Asia Pacific region look for fresh ways of optimising their mass-market floors, JCM American Corp, otherwise know as JCM Global, says it is ever more focused on helping them.
In August last year, JCM Global, a specialist in bill validators for casino gaming equipment – including slot machines and table games – announced it was acquiring slot machine ticket printer specialist FutureLogic Inc for a consideration of US$70.6 million.
Kunal Mishra (pictured), general manager of new business development for the newly consolidated company, gave GGRAsia an update during Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia on the benefits of the merger. He explained that the complementary nature of the two product lines – with little overlap – is a bonus for all the customers.
“From that standpoint, the merger made absolute sense. We looked at how to make the combined entity that much stronger for our customers,” he stated.
“Some of the products we have [on display at G2E Asia] are ones we have acquired from FutureLogic, such as PromoNet – which is already out and gaining market traction.”
PromoNet enables casino managements to send – via printed tickets tailored to the player’s likes regardless of whether they are casino members or not – promotional offers.
“In Australia, we have Ticket2Go which allows us to upgrade certain machines with ticket printers when they may not have had them before,” added Mr Mishra.
“One of the things we underestimated in the merger was the positive synergies we got. Because we now have a deeper engineering team on all sides. And we have gone from being in a majority of casinos as individual businesses, to being in almost every casino with a combination of the two product lines,” stated the JCM executive.
“As casinos start to focus on optimisation, we have to start to optimise [as a supplier] every component on the casino floor. And some of those are critical components like bill validators and ticket printers.
“Does a casino care whether a bill validator is working or not? The answer to that is that the bill validator is the entry point for every gaming machine, so the answer to that is ‘yes, they do care’. So we need the tools to ensure our product is performing, and performing optimally,” added the JCM executive.
JCM also has a suite of software products it calls DNA – Dynamic Network Application – to help in that process.
“For example, the technology can monitor the acceptance rate of a bill validator, and if the acceptance rate falls below a certain optimal threshold it can alert the casino to investigate what the problem is,” said Mr Mishra.
“One thing the casinos want to know is that all the firmware is the same for all the bill validators. In the past the process was manual. Someone had to go to every single machine, update the firmware and make sure no mistakes were made. It was not only a laborious process and a costly process, but one that had the potential for human error. We have the ability now to download the firmware to all the bill validators on the floor, based on the [regulatory] approvals that have been received, to make sure the floor is unified.”
