HARMAN, recently recognized by the advisory firm Zinnov as a top R&D services provider for the gaming industry, continues to play and continues to win in this market.
Games are unique and personal. By focusing on what is unique about a certain gaming project, and the competitive strengths of the customer, HARMAN Connected Services is able to combine consulting programs with mobile, cloud and analytic solutions to ensure each HARMAN gaming partner is delivering innovate, creative and awesome games and the ‘gamer’ has unique gaming experiences, that can be shared with other gamers on a global bases.
So, why are gaming operators interested in mobile, cloud and analytics?
There is a common industry belief that operators can recognize 1.7x the revenue from a single customer if they can engage that person on more than one channel. Think of this as the “Uberification of Gambling and Gaming,” where operators are stealing a play from the ‘gig generation’ playbook offering users gaming engagements when they want and on the desired channel.
In addition, operators are realizing that when they identify a user across channels – let’s say a brick and mortar retail shop and a YouTube gaming channel – marketing spend can be optimized through cross-channel promotions. As an example, imagine the gamer placing a football bet at the retail shop then, later in the day, logs into the YouTube digital channel and is identified by his earlier retail activity resulting in a much more relevant, personalized promotion.
Digging down into this scenario, we can look at how mobile, cloud and analytics support this evolution in the Gaming industry.
Mobile: Operators are moving from a “Mobile First” to “Mobile Only” approach because a huge and growing number of the gaming segment – those under 35 – are mobile only users. Also, as in any mobile application, being able to interact with the game while at the coffee shop, on the train or absolutely anywhere increases brand mindshare and overall brand equity.
Analytics: The ability to access and understand lots of user data, build formulas and make predictions is also a high priority item for all operators. Operators are able to collect a gold mine of data – everything from customer behaviors including playing patterns, channels frequented, functions used and peaks in gaming time of day. Product and marketing teams use this valuable source of information to design more engaging features, analytical models such as Life time Value - the predicted net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer – as well as marketing mix models and customized promotions.
Cloud: Cloud solutions help operators on infrastructure availability, flexibility of scaling, reduced costs and integrating services to a single point. Most of the players in the gambling/gaming domain have preference of private cloud for data security issues. Cloud solutions have also been heavily used to deploy Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) functions to offer real-time promotions to gamers.
If you are interested in learning more about how HARMAN Connected Services can bring expertise and mobile, analytics and cloud solutions to your gaming/gambling platform or business, please click here and we will be happy to contact you.
