Shuffle Master aims to offer floor wide solutions to casino operators’ needs in Asia and beyond, says Adrian Halpenny
Adrian Halpenny, President of Australasia for Shuffle Master, is overseeing the expansion of the company’s footprint in Asian markets. Ultimately that means selling even more units. But he’s aiming at a holistic approach by offering a suite of products, rather than presenting Shuffle Master to the market as a niche supplier.
When people think of Shuffle Master, they naturally tend to focus on the company’s core product areas—automatic card shufflers and proprietary table games. Shuffle Master’s i-Shoe™ card shuffler, for example, is recognised as an industry-leading product for its levels of accuracy and security and the integrity of its random shuffling process. Shuffle Master’s Rapid suite of live dealer, automated betting table games is also a proven hit in the important Singapore casino market.
This kind of market proven recognition and success can only be a good thing. But Mr Halpenny sees his role as to kick on to the next phase. One of his aims is to ensure Shuffle Master is regarded in the region as a ‘solution-focused’ supplier. That includes making use of and developing the slot and automated table technology acquired when Las Vegas-based Shuffle Master purchased the Australian company Star Games in 2006.
‘Solution’ is a word that gets bandied about a lot in modern business. In Shuffle Master’s case, at the heart of the phrase is a simple idea—that the company should have a suite of products that bring benefits to an operator’s casino floor through practical innovation.
As an executive with experience in the gaming industry and running technology companies on behalf of private equity investors, Mr Halpenny has some invaluable insights—from his ability to identify with operators and from an investor’s perspective.
Inside Asian Gaming spoke to Mr Halpenny during his recent visit to Macau for the launch of the company’s Equinox slot cabinet. We asked him how he planned to put his ‘solution based’ strategy into effect.
IAG: How long have you been in your current role?
Adrian Halpenny: In November last year, I was appointed to this role after nearly four years with Shuffle Master as Director of Operations for the Australian subsidiary. Based in Sydney, I’d been supporting our Asian business from a supply side.
My first introduction to gaming was a brief role ten years ago at IGT. After IGT I held a number of senior positions in private equity companies for six years that had a manufacturing focus in the electronics and automotive industries.
What’s your strategy for expanding in Asian markets?
The strategy is to bring greater innovation to our product offering in all markets that we participate in. But you can’t just say that and hope that everything else will fall into place. So in order to achieve that objective we’ve had to get back to basics and build a solid foundation for the business by getting the structure right. That’s why we’re delighted to have Ken Jolly heading up the new team as Vice President, Asia. We’ve spent some time on making sure that he will get the support he needs in this region by drawing on the strengths of our product specialists.
What does being a ‘solution provider’ involve?
Bringing products to market that meet our customers’ highest commercial needs. Our customers represent some of the most sophisticated operators of any business types in the world and they expect a world-class product to be delivered. We can’t do that without their input so customer feedback is critical to our development and our ability to tailor offerings, particularly in the Asian region.
Probably the best example I can give you of this is we have focused our development to support multiple applications to redefine content delivery. Both our Equinox and Mojo cabinets are capable of operating as a slot or a multi-terminal station to give operators more flexibility with their floor.
How do you execute that strategy?
Culturally, Shuffle Master is a much different organisation than it was even two years ago and this is because we’ve spent time identifying what we need to do to be more meaningful to our customers. That was the easy part. Now we have this insight we’ve put in place the necessary foundations to build the business and that included getting the team right in Asia, aligning our R&D with our customers and really driving the workplace to reflect these initiatives.
I mentioned Ken Jolly before; he brings to us a wealth of knowledge on the Asian markets He’s forward thinking about what the market needs. To help Ken, we’ve brought in resources from within the organisation including Georg Fekete who specialises in table games and utility products to ensure that all of our products are championed by subject matter experts.
Can you explain a bit more about Shuffle Master’s approach to product development?
Our approach to product development is to value-add to the investment our customers make when they purchase our equipment. If you look at Equinox, not only do you see an aesthetically pleasing piece of equipment, you are looking at a flexible product that can work as a slot or Vegas Star (with automated video dealer). That flexibility is core to our development.
The table products are enhanced by the addition of side-bets and progressives and in the electronic table systems we’ve integrated our platforms to give operators the option of semi-automated (Rapid) and fully automated (Vegas Star) products so the investment they make in the infrastructure will be adaptable for their future needs.
How important is your experience on the manufacturing and the investment side of business in creating a successful strategy?
I certainly think manufacturing has given me a very practical approach to anything I do commercially. If you gave me the ‘in 25-words or less’ test I’d condense everything down to being practical, flexible and all-encompassing. By that I mean you can’t build a product without the input of a lot of areas in an organisation, so it’s essential that I have a holistic view of anything we undertake. You definitely have to be flexible in your processes to adapt to changing market dynamics. Our organisation certainly has a high degree of agility to it which makes for a very energetic work environment.
