Innovation Sets New Digital Standard for Gaming Industry

• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

• Business Operation
• Sales & Marketing

• System Integration

The Star Entertainment Group, one of Australia’s largest casino operators, was facing challenges in differentiating its VIP customer experience and closing high-value transactions quickly. The company's existing chip buying process was taking its VIP patrons away from playing for up to 20 minutes as they waited to convert their account credits to chips at a gaming table. The process was manual and resource-intensive, requiring paperwork in triplicate and multiple approvals for security purposes. The company wanted to transform this complex manual process into a fast and convenient mobile experience for its VIPs.

The Star Entertainment Group is one of Australia’s largest casino operators. The company owns and operates four casino properties along Australia’s east coast. It generates $1.6 billion in revenue yearly, has more than 2 million registered customers and 8,000 employees. The company's vision—“Let Us Entertain You”—blends gaming, hospitality and entertainment to provide guests a more memorable experience. In the casino business, VIP customers are critical—a mere 0.1 percent of the entire customer base represents two-thirds of the total revenue.

To revamp the Chip Purchase Voucher (CPV) process, The Star Entertainment Group chose Software AG’s webMethods technology. Now VIP patrons complete a simple form on an Apple® iPad® to request funds to be released. The new automated paperless process takes less than two minutes. Patrons enter a personal identification number and digitally sign the electronic contract to finalize the legally binding, high-value transaction on the spot. The innovation sets a new standard for the industry—it’s the only fully digitalized and mobile method of converting credits on a patron’s account to chips on the casino gaming table in the world today. Behind the scenes, The Star Entertainment Group leverages a service-oriented architecture and business process management as the agile backbone for its mobile innovations. webMethods Business Process Management Suite, Integration Server, Broker and Composite Application Framework are the technologies behind the solution, which integrates an iPad application, The Star Entertainment Group’s core casino systems management and a bespoke web application.

• Improved VIP customer service—10 times faster than before, from 20 minutes down to two
• First and only casino worldwide to digitalize the complex funds-to-chip issuing process
• Optimizing customer service fosters loyalty and increases retention

• Helped increase VIP revenue by almost 57%