In this interview with CalvinAyre.com’s Rebecca Liggero, Marco Castaldo of Microgame tells us the challenges that omni-channel operators faces in today’s digital era.
Consumers nowadays have the world at their fingertips thanks to the modern technological advancements that have been and still being discovered and developed by scientist and engineers around the world. A consumer may now buy goods online or even book a flight to another country through the internet, saving him or her both time and energy. Meanwhile, a businessman based in the Philippines may be able to trade his goods to another businessman in New York without leaving his office. But technological advancement is a double edge sword that can either bring heaven on earth or drag people to hell. In today’s digital era, consumers fear that their privacy is being invaded due to the technology available to them. Marco Castaldo of Microgame told CalvinAyre.com that privacy has been the top concern of most customers who feel that modern technology has become invasive to their lives. He said that operators should always be mindful about that in order not to frighten their customers. “That’s the question that every operator will have to answer in terms of the types of marketing and CRM strategy that they’re going to deploy,” Castaldo said. “There’s also an issue about privacy, and you do have some players who want to continue to play anonymously and not necessarily opt in to an omni-channel system where they will have to provide their details.” Aside from privacy, Castaldo pointed out that omni-channel marketing firms also faces challenges in providing a seamless omni-channel experience to integrate the technology and products in a single platform. “Operators, by definition, will be using a lot of providers for the different games they have, for mobile, for web-based. In my experience, it requires redesigning of platforms from scratch to make it compatible with the products from all the different suppliers and to incorporate the tools that you need to generate the omni-channel experience for the players,” he said. Newer technology, according to Castaldo also means more new regulatory laws. He pointed out that in Italy, regulations is very strict in terms of what you can do and in terms the technology you need to use. Castaldo said there are also separate regulations for land-based locations, such as casinos, and for online platforms. “The regulators haven’t thought out how to harmonize this. Right now, the trend is for land based operators, we are talking about the casinos, but also, especially, land-based betting shops, trying to branch out and trying to acquire online players by using the real-estate,” he said. “You need to be clever to figure out a way to bridge the gap between the systems for the online business and for the shops.”
