Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | August 2009 20 Transact Fit to Print 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 T ransAct’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 factormeans theydon’t have to think about the printer much. It saves them costs of servicing and saves them on staff time. And Tracey Chernay, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing of TransAct Technologies TransAct’s Epic 950