Casino Enterprise Management

When you think InfoGenesis, what do you think? Point-of-sale, right? Of course you do, everyone does—and you should, because what InfoGenesis did for point-of-sale (POS) doesn’t happen everyday. Every once in a while an idea comes along that changes the face of everything. A revelation so revolutionary and just plain right that before long, everyone and their cousin has incorporated it into everyday life—the microwave, sliced bread, the wheel.

Now, InfoGenesis didn’t invent the wheel when it comes to POS systems, but they sure did make it turn a lot smoother—and that’s not to be overlooked. But neither is what else InfoGenesis is doing these days—and that’s a lot. From seamless restaurant reservations and table management, to line-busting self-serve kiosks, to in-depth visual analytics across the board, wheels are turning at InfoGenesis, and you’re all about to see guest services rolling along better than ever before.

Genesis
Based in Santa Barbara, Calif., InfoGenesis first hit the scene in 1986, a time when POS was riddled with all sorts of problems—separate bar, dining, gift shop, etc., systems that didn’t speak the same language and required massive, manual-input databases to sort through; managers using intuition and guesswork to try to maximize profits and services in absence of accurate and timely information to guide their decisions.

InfoGenesis got right to work. Its first InfoGenesis POS was based on the IBM 4680 POS operating system and, in 1988, it was successfully installed at the Las Vegas Flamingo Hilton…then the Las Vegas Hilton, the Golden Nugget, the Mirage, and Treasure Island.

Brent Christensen, VP of global sales, marketing, and product management, said: “Back in the early to mid-1980s, hotel/casinos were competing for ‘biggest and best on the Strip.’ One of the problems they faced was that there were no POS systems that could effectively manage the complexities of their business—multiple profit centers with different business rules, complex tax and comp requirements, and a requirement for rock-solid performance and scalability. Based on earlier successes we had achieved in large-scale resort properties, we partnered with…the then-largest hotel in Las Vegas to optimize our systems for the gaming market.”

Revelation
It wasn’t until 1997 that things really got rolling, when InfoGenesis launched an industry first: Microsoft Windows- and SQL-based POS. Quite appropriately called Revelation, it was built for Microsoft Windows NT and provided an open system POS and an intuitive graphic interface. It was scalable from one terminal to thousands, and a centralized database pulled together all POS data and provided instant access to information from all levels. A new era was ushered in, bringing with it streamlined operations, up-to-the-minute information, and guest service like never seen before. Revelation’s inventory monitoring, property management system interfaces, liquor gun control interfaces, credit card authorization and settlement, multi-revenue outlet reporting, flexible price and menu scheduling, and off-line capabilities quickly made the system an industry star.

InfoGenesis President and CEO Mark Tapling said Revelation was a natural fit for the casino industry: “As casinos expanded and developed the need to maintain multiple properties, and added non-gaming entertainment, the need to have customized point-of-sale and ‘above property’ consolidated reporting really featured the unique capabilities of our POS products. Also, as properties became larger, the massive hiring for venue operations emphasized the need for intuitive products that staff could learn quickly, and were available around the clock for years on end.”

By 1998, Revelation was recognized as the superior Windows NT POS solution for the hospitality industry and won “Best Technology” at IH/M&RS, the annual hotel show sponsored by the American Hotel & Motel Association. Accolades and awards poured in, including the Microsoft Retail Application Design Award for 2000.

eRevelation
Not a company to rest on its laurels, InfoGenesis soon got to work making the management solution more accessible to potential customers. In June 2000, the company launched another industry first: eRevelation, an application service provider (ASP)-based POS.

“It was an emerging trend that made a lot of business sense for us back in 2000,” Christensen said. “The transition was also technically enabled by the fact that our product was engineered to be deployed over high-latency wide area networks. Consequently, moving it to the public Internet did not require ‘redesign,’ but rather just some optimization around the area of software change management, user credential provisioning, and networking/data center security.”

eRevelation allowed casinos, hotels, resorts, and restaurants to tap into the system and all its benefits for a single monthly fee. Its multi-tiered architecture was built for mission-critical POS, had true offline capability, and was just as scalable as its predecessor.

“Because of the flexibility of our flagship POS product, we are able to offer a single solution that can be optimized for all types of differing operations. The common thread among them all is the need for absolute robustness and scalability, whether it be because of multiple locations across a Wide Area Network as in managed foodservice or hotels, 24 hour operations in a casino, or extreme ‘bursts’ of transaction volumes like we see in the stadium/arena market,” Christensen said.

With the launch of eRevelation, things really took off for InfoGenesis. 2003 brought record growth of more than 30 percent. 2004 blew that record out of the water with nearly 40 percent growth. 2004 also brought the start of an acquisition by private equity firm Waburg Pincus, in what was rumored to be one of the largest enterprise software deals of the year.

Customer Satisfaction
For those who use the product, this should come as no surprise—nor should the fact InfoGenesis’ customer satisfaction rate soars at more than 90 percent. In 2003, just eight months after installing a different POS management system, the Tropicana Casino and Resort in Atlantic City switched to InfoGenesis—and hasn’t switched again since. Don Kneisel, corporate VP of IT for Tropicana Casinos and Resorts, sees no reason to. “It’s more stable, easy to get information from the product, and there’s little to no customization because InfoGenesis is so flexible and configurable,” he said. “Their support is superior and the product is very stable. …It stays up and provides management the needed information in a timely and consistent manner.”

Christensen says one of the secrets is the people at InfoGenesis. “We believe our products are unique because of the flexible, open architecture, interfaces, and database structures, but really it is our people that make the difference,” he said. “Our focus is on the relationships we establish with our customers, and our desire to maintain long and mutually beneficial relationships. In 20-plus years of doing business, over 90 percent of our customers have stayed with us through three generations of POS, and are now benefiting from our new offerings in other areas. A business can’t achieve this kind of customer retention without having the right attitude toward those customers.”

Those customers continue to expand in numbers—these days, InfoGenesis POS  is everywhere; from the Charlie Palmer Group, to the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago, to The MGM Mirage (not to mention Ceasars, Mandalay, The Borgata, The Palms, The Hard Rock in Las Vegas, all Seminole Casinos in Florida, Casino Windsor, Casino Rama in Canada, and scores of other). Christensen does not take this for granted. “We are very fortunate to have such a strong position in the gaming industry; the IT, finance, and operations executives we have worked with have helped us steadily improve our products, processes, and people; we are a much better company as a result,” he said.

If you’ve paid a bill at a restaurant, hotel, or, of course, a casino lately, odds are InfoGenesis was involved in that transaction one way or another—and you probably didn’t even notice. You might have noticed short lines, the maître d’ recognizing you by name, and managers with big smiles on their faces—thank you, InfoGenesis.

Reservations
While the industry was still reeling from Revelation, InfoGenesis kept on rolling.

In 2005, the company acquired eTouch, adding kiosk ordering and cashless payment; it released InfoGenesis Reservations, powered by ResPAK and InfoGenesis POS v4.0 in 2006.

Tapling says these solutions were a natural progression. “Businesses have become more complex—many include a hotel, high-end dining, quick serve dining, franchise operations, customized guest offerings, or a spa,” he said. “This created a new need for unprecedented levels of system integration, and custom workflows for transaction tendering.”

InfoGenesis Reservations is where running a restaurant starts—you can’t, after all, have a point-of-sale without first getting diners into their seats. InfoGenesis Reservations can help you reach your full per guest revenue potential, and ensure your repeat and VIP guests get the attention they deserve.

Imagine any employee, on his first day on the job, greeting a guest by name, showing him to his favorite table, and recommending a new label of wine from the region he prefers. Because InfoGenesis Reservations keeps track of guest preferences, how many times they have visited, and even what they look like, all this is now possible.

InfoGenesis Reservations will also help manage all those other tables—not just the VIPs. With flexible table layouts, real-time status updates, and intuitive, robust management features, you can greatly improve your efficiency. You can even send your guests an SMS alert to their mobile phone when their table is ready—letting them spend their wait time shopping or gaming, instead of milling around the entryway.

Of course, customer satisfaction doesn’t mean a thing if it breaks your bottom line. Christensen says not to worry about that with InfoGenesis. “We offer the most cost-efficient applications over the useful life of those applications,” he said. “Our customers are sophisticated enough to understand that ‘first cost’ in an enterprise software system is only the tip of the iceberg with respect to the total cost of the system. Because our application software is designed on open, flexible architecture with easy-to-use back office applications and unparalleled up-time and scalability/performance, it typically beats the total cost of ownership of the next competitor by 30 percent to over 200 percent, depending on the operation.”

Self-Service
InfoGenesis Self-Service is also helping customers help you boost your revenue. Kiosk software and hardware, a self-service web application, and integrated stored-value accounts create more ways than ever before for guests to spend. InfoGenesis Self-Service can also drastically reduce your credit card transaction, labor, and customer service costs.

How much time do your guests spend waiting in a buffet line? InfoGenesis Self-Service kiosks can slash it by offering a guest the opportunity to pay and pick up a seating time, then be free to shop and play instead of showing up to queue 45 minutes before they really want to eat.

Custom Applications
And it’s not just about the food—The Chumash Casino Resort outside Santa Barbara, Calif., uses several of the latest InfoGenesis products, including a custom-created gift card management system put in place late last year. Peter Saccullo, executive director of technology, says the system was born out of the casino’s ideas, and InfoGenesis built to their specifications. Now guests can use gift cards anywhere at any Chumash property, from the spa or hotel to the restaurant or gift shop—they can even cash it out at a cage. Sacculla says one of the best things about the system is, because it is native to the technology, there are no processing fees—before, casinos couldn’t offer cards like this without using a big name credit processing company.

In the future, the Chumash properties would like to integrate golf course and convenience store/gas station management systems—using InfoGenesis solutions, of course. Saccullo said it is an easy choice to make: “What sets InfoGenesis apart from some of the others I’ve noticed is that they understand technology and use technology in a way that helps their customers provide better customer service. From a gift card system to point-of-sale to hand-held to integration with inventory, InfoGenesis is not afraid of technology; they’re not afraid to say, ‘How can we use this to better customer service?’ I’ve noticed some other companies do not take this into account.”

With all these new technologies, the need for integration is greater than ever, as is the need to understand guests’ spending trends. InfoGenesis, which led the charge with POS intercommunication, is on top of this one too.

The New “Revelation”
Today, the new “revelation” from InfoGenesis is InfoGenesis Analytics. Released just weeks ago, InfoGenesis Analytics takes analytics to the next level, using distributed ETL technology—and the understanding that your casino may not be able to build a large-scale data mart, and that availability of data for analysis is a must. Tapling said: “Our belief is that the value of any analytic reporting system is a function of the quality of the input, and the volume of quality data available to analyze. Point-of-sale systems aggregate the highest quality data in an organization arguably faster than any other system. Since the customers self select to participate, and actually make a payment to contribute their economic vote, the quality and speed of entry is unprecedented in this environment. Consistent with our strategy to maintain openness, we will also be able to integrate data from other applications to enable real multi-dimensional analysis.”

The company designed InfoGenesis Analytics to allow managers to make fact-based decisions to increase staff productivity, customer service, and financial performance. It is built on an open framework using Microsoft SQL Server 2005, which ensures easy integration into the network and security framework you already have. Again, InfoGenesis has “revelationized” the status quo. Traditionally, analytics products have required data to be replicated from source systems into a data warehouse, and then have executed an ETL to populate the analytics cube—requiring casinos to make significant investments in hardware and software to support years’ worth of data.

Instead of taking this well-worn rut, InfoGenesis Analytics builds industry partnerships with out-of-the-box distributed ETLs—goodbye, astronomical time and dollar investments; hello, immediate reporting capabilities.

Added bonuses: InfoGenesis Analytics removes the need for piles of spreadsheets from different areas (20 to 40 percent of which contain errors, according to executive education organization BABSON) and, thanks to its Cube Browser, you don’t need help from a stressed-out IT employee to get a report in your hand. Even if you already have a different analytics system in place, you can still use InfoGenesis’ super-easy user interface (all you do is click and drag).

Christensen says InfoGenesis Analytics is groundbreaking in two other ways as well: “First, it will enable customers to apply powerful analytical capabilities to perhaps one of the richest stores of under-utilized data: the POS transaction history. Secondly, it will allow both business users and analysts to review trending and comparative information in a ‘three-dimensional manner’—any data source can be compared or analyzed along any ‘dimension’ based on the requirements of the business.”

The Next “Revelation”
As InfoGenesis POS keeps getting better and more involved with each generation, Christensen foresees the same with InfoGenesis Analytics: “Future releases of this application will allow for predictive analytics so operators will be able to pick important data elements in their business and use them to actually predict outcomes based on those elements—including things like weather forecasts, upcoming events, and even data from third party sources like room reservations, et cetera.” The company plans to release InfoGenesis Analytics v2.0 late in the second quarter of this year.

The next revelations for POS aren’t far off, either. “We are looking forward to a lot of ‘international’ enhancements that will allow us to not only grow our business outside North America, but also enable our POS suite to interoperate with a greater number of other systems via web services,” Christensen said. “An example of this is the enablement of ‘Chip & PIN’ capabilities for the U.K. market. We will soon be releasing a ‘payment services’ module that will allow any third party payment system…to ‘plug’ directly into InfoGenesis POS via customizable adapters.”

Another solution on the horizon is InfoGenesis Self-Service v3.0, scheduled for release in the third quarter of this year. The update will include improvements such as enhanced printer management, wizard-based setup, enhanced reports via Microsoft SQL 2005 Reporting Services, and repeatable “standing” orders.

What other wheels are turning at InfoGenesis? Christensen says the need for systems integration will continue to grow—and InfoGenesis will continue to make sure yours integrate smoothly. “One of the ‘facts of life’ of hospitality technology is that there are many, many small companies producing a lot of really interesting products that fill unique ‘niche specialty’ areas,” he said. “Many operators struggle to integrate all of these disparate systems into a cohesive business strategy. We are seeing a greater call for  ‘services-oriented’ design, which, frankly, is an area of great strength for us. …We try to stay ahead of trends we see developing—balanced with prudent business decision-making, of course.”

Tapling shares this vision: “We see a strong trend for what we refer to as special purpose functionality. This would include things like mobile applications, cell phone integration, RFID, automated inventory applications, analytics, self service applications, and IP telephone support. The discretionary spend per customer opportunity is quite high, so the return on understanding your customer, and being available for them when they are ready to engage is quite high.”

Tapling’s plan for getting there is, like the wheel, deceptively simple: “Innovation through integration. The speed of technology enhancement is too fast for anyone to fund organically. Creating vertically oriented partnerships that include software integrations enable us to leverage an extended R&D environment, while providing our customers consistent support from a single source of supply. We believe maintaining our commitment to open standards is the fastest track to achieve this goal consistently, and over the long term.”

As President and CEO, Mark Tapling is responsible for implementing the guest experience management vision in the marketplace. His experience in launching new markets, managing global operations, and improving the customer experience continue to extend the market leadership of InfoGenesis. Prior to joining InfoGenesis, Tapling was the CEO of Everypath—the sector leader in enterprise-level mobile applications. Before joining Everypath, Tapling was the CEO of ServiceWare Technologies, where he successfully led the company’s IPO, was recognized as one of Software Magazine’s “100 People to Watch in Knowledge Management,” and was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by PNC Bank. Earlier in his career, Tapling managed international operations for analytics company Comshare and held executive management positions at Lotus Development (IBM) and Soft-Switch Inc. He has also served on the board of ProClarity, a privately held analytics company. He received a bachelor’s of science in economics and management, with an emphasis in food systems, from Michigan State University. He also completed post graduate work at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business Administration and Cornell University’s S.C. Johnson School of Management.

Brent Christensen, Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing for InfoGenesis, had 15+ years of experience in hospitality operations prior to his move to technology in 1994. After serving in management and executives roles for other hospitality software companies, Christensen joined InfoGenesis in 2000. He was instrumental in the launch of eRevelation, the industry’s first ASP-managed POS solution, and led the Sales Operations and Product Strategy groups before moving to Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Christensen received a bachelor’s of science (magna cum laude) from California Polytechnic State University, Pomona, and also attended the University of California, San Diego, where he studied biomedical engineering.

Mary Huyck can be reached at editor5[at]aceme.org.