Tracey Chernay, TransAct Technologies’ Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, discusses the strong showing of the Epic 950 printer and her company’s continuing solid financial performance in the face of the recent economic downturn
TransAct’s Epic 950 printer was specified as the printer of choice on all the slot machines at the glistening new City of Dreams mega resort on Macau’s Cotai Strip. As TransAct Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Tracey Chernay explained, “we integrated with all the major [slot machine] manufacturers that are on the floor there and supported the City of Dreams opening. I’m really thrilled with the opportunity to be in a property of that calibre, and the size of the win was tremendous.”
As Ms Chernay points out, “we gained some real groundswell of support for the 950 in Asia. It started with Wynn Macau, then Crown and now City of Dreams, as well as many of the other properties that have chosen the 950 when they add printers to their floor.” Inside Asian Gaming caught up with Ms Chernay recently in Macau to ask her about TransAct’s progress in the region.
IAG: How has TransAct been able to do so well in Asia?
Ms Chernay: I think a lot of it has to do with having local sales and support here in Macau. We have a resident sales manager, Andrew Hanley, who works here, who is really key to our success in this region. Andrew is accessible, he has the support necessary to make all of the equipment work smoothly, and has a great relationship not only with the customers, but also the good interface back into engineering with our company. This can make it pretty seamless for both the casino properties as well as the OEMs [original equipment manufacturers].
Beyond the local sales and support, the product itself has obviously also been a big reason for the success of TransAct in the region. What advantages does the Epic 950 offer over other printers?
The real advantage of the 950 is the serviceability, ease of use and reliability of the product. We’ve had tremendous reliability ratings with the product. We track quality very closely, and our failure rate on the product is so low that most of the operators don’t have occasion to have even one replaced.
Secondly, there’s a feature of the product that makes it a little bit unique in that the outer chassis of the printer is mounted into the EGM [electronic gaming machine], and it stays there. That’s the connection to the EGM. The inner chassis of the printer comes out, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Bally, IGT or WMS game, you just flash the correct firmware on it and it can go in any game. That makes the requirement to keep spares on the shelf very minimal, because you only need a few spares. You don’t need specific Bally spares or IGT spares. It keeps the need for having extra inventory down, which saves costs.
Among the unique features of the 950 are the ease with which you can integrate the product with the support tools we provide for the OEMs to get the product integrated. And for the operator, there’s the ability to access the paper pack very easily, to buy component parts for a 950 should they need to, and then easy warranties with us that allow them to just pull an old printer out, pull a new one off the shelf, and then we’ll just pick up printers on a regular basis and just provide replacements for them.
The thing that the operators like the best is that the high reliability factor means they don’t have to think about the printer much. It saves them costs of servicing and saves them on staff time. And their staff like the 950 because it’s easy to use.
One other thing the operators say they like about the 950 is that in terms of the paper stock, the 950 will notify when the printer is down to just one or two tickets left, and the operators like that ability to notify when it’s down so close to being out, because that way they don’t get so much paper left in the tray when they put in a new ticket stack, and so they’re not wasting. Other printers notify when there are 30 or 40 tickets left in the stack.
Competing products can have a lot of paper left in the printer when they notify ‘ticket low’. With the 950 you can specify down to very low, down to one or two tickets. That is a real advantage; it’s less paper wastage, it’s more green, and everyone’s looking to be a little more environmentally friendly, as well as saving money. Each product works differently, and the older products in particular that might have been out there for longer don’t have the ability to go down to such a low trigger.
Your latest product launch was ServerPort™. How has that been doing?
We’ve been working with all the major OEMs to make sure that the ServerPort™ is integrated into their system, and what it does is provide the ability not only to download firmware remotely to the printer and to monitor the printer status through applications like Bally’s display manager and DCM, for example, but also it provides access to the dualport of the printer that will allow you to print coupons and vouchers separate from the gaming ticket. So that dualport capability is really important and ServerPort™ is the access to that dualport.
Right now we’re at the stage of working with the OEMs and educating our casino customers about what ServerPort™ can offer them, and we’re excited about that potential. I think what you’ll see is that as this region grows in the number of properties and the properties become more competitive with each other, they’re going to be looking for ways to differentiate themselves and reward their players. We think ServerPort™ will be a key part of that strategy.
ServerPort™ will offer those really forward thinking properties with great marketing departments access to another tool they can use to differentiate their property. For example, coupon printing might be a key one for several major properties in the Asian region, where they can incentivize their customers, cross market to outlets within their properties, as well as reward their players who have been loyal and played a lot with them, by offering them some comps.
Despite the economic crisis and the waning fortunes of the gaming industry worldwide, TransAct’s business is actually growing…
TransAct has been particularly fortunate to have a very diverse business. We’re not only in the gaming business, but also in banking teller printers, point of sale and lottery. Fortunately for TransAct, we had a record year in 2008—across the board, but particularly in gaming. The First half of 2009 is going quite well, and we announced our first quarter and we were profitable. We’ve not yet announced second quarter results, but we’ll keep you posted on how we’re going.
What do you attribute your positive results to?
It really gets down to having innovative products, great customers relationships and superior service in our regions. If you look at what we’ve done here in Asia, for example, by locating sales and support in the region, our customers believe they can count on TransAct, they know how to reach us easily, the communications flow easily with local sales and support, and I think it’s critical to the whole equation. It’s product, and place, and price and the entire offering. We really wrap that up in a package for the customer that I believe is superior to anything out there.
The City of Dreams win was a big one for you, but with the go-slow on development of further new casino properties, are you concerned about TransAct’s prospects over the next couple of quarters?
Obviously, we’re very interested in the health of the overall gaming industry and want to see the gaming industry come back. We’re all very dependent on that. However, we’re also very aggressive about going out there and winning the business that’s available to be won. We are offering more value and performance in every proposal with a commitment to personal customer service. And to that end, we’re also making investments in our business. For example, we’re in process to add incremental sales and technical sales positions to take advantage of opportunities in existing and also developing markets.
So are you in the unusual situation of increasing your headcount, while other gaming suppliers are laying off staff?
Yes, we are growing staff. We’ve just added a number of people to our staff in inside sales and marketing, so TransAct is actually growing. And we expect that you’ll see further growth from us here in Asia in the short term. We anticipate that we’ll be adding even more local technical support to work alongside Andrew as well.
