Celebrating its one-year anniversary, Anaxi, the combined online Real Money Gaming and Customer Experience Solutions division of Aristocrat, is continuing its mission to create a new frontier for online gaming and deliver great entertainment experiences for operators and players.
Anaxi was created as a destination where players can enjoy the excitement of online Real Money Gaming with confidence. They are bringing Aristocrat’s casino-based games to the digital space and in September announced that the longstanding and fan-favorite slot title Buffalo went online for the very first time.
Anaxi understands the core casino customer and how they interact with games and IP, offering an invaluable resource and partnership for operators as they look to bring new experiences to their fans and engage new ones across mobile.
Karthick Raman
“Anaxi CXS delivers the world’s best gaming entertainment experiences to players and operators alike through its extraordinary content, innovative offerings, and world-class integrated technology solutions anywhere, anytime, on any device,” Karthick Raman, global vice president of product management said of its vision statement.
Committed to its One Player, One Experience vision since inception, Anaxi has been delivering on its promise of a seamless gaming experience both with content through its igaming portfolio and servicing operators through its award-winning CXS solutions.
“Anaxi’s CXS business delivers compelling content, technology and solutions that are made to exceed expectations across the board,” Raman said. “Anaxi CXS bridges the gap between land-based and online gaming. Our innovative entertainment solutions also integrate loyalty and rewards with online content and experiences to create a simple, consistent player journey that delivers best-in-class performance for our partners and their teams.”
Three years ago, Aristocrat made a strategic decision to transition from focusing on the gaming system’s business to building a customer experience solutions business, Raman said. That means following the player and operator journey at the property and looking at every touchpoint to understand their pain points and build solutions to solve them.
“Traditionally, all systems-based products started with the EGM in the center and built solutions around it to optimize operations,” Raman explained. “We are changing that narrative to focus on the largest asset of operators—their customers and employees.”
“The goal is to build experiences that will improve efficiency for the operator, generate more revenue and create a delightful omnichannel experience,” said Raman.
Raman reported that they created a three-pronged approach as part of their Customer Experience Solutions strategy. The first is to modernize technology due to outdated casino systems and increased player and employee expectations for advanced technologies.
“We want to move towards cloud-based technology, create stand-alone products, and develop an open platform so operators can integrate with any existing solutions,” said Raman. “We want to give our operators the freedom to choose from best-in-class solutions and easily integrate with our products to support their employee and customers’ needs.”
Second is the need to mobilize the experience. They want to transform the player and operator experiences to be mobile-first to drive higher player engagement, better service delivery, and operator mobilization across the gaming floor.
Third, they want to create seamless omnichannel solutions that connect players beyond gaming. “Players come into the casino to play, dine, stay, and be entertained, and we are connecting all aspects of the customer journey at the property,” said Raman.
We’re creating a unified loyalty solution so players can earn and redeem rewards no matter where they are and no matter what they are doing. They’re exploring creating a universal jackpot solution for players online and on the casino floor, with potentially larger payouts to make it more exciting for the player, Raman shared.
“We have built products, such as daily free games, that can be scaled across both iGaming and land-based gaming. The teams are collaborating to start unlocking gamification features to drive stickiness and engagement for our players,” Raman said.
Josh Morris
Josh Morris, senior vice president of igaming product and technology, said they’re well-positioned to create more customer entertainment across more channels.
“From an igaming perspective, we’re making good progress, and we’re live in the U.S. across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan,” he said. “We’re also in the UK, Netherlands, Canada, and Spain. Our immediate focus is on bringing our most loved gaming brands online and expanding the experience for our players and partners in igaming.”
Iconic brand titles like Buffalo, Wild Wild Nugget, Timberwolf and Miss Kitty are just some of the Aristocrat game content that is now reimagined online with operators.
Morris noted that another way to enhance that player experience is adding free games to create more engagement—something that will be coming in the year ahead. They are also launching an igaming jackpot as part of the concept of bringing the most beloved brands online in a way that engages and helps players transition among multiple channels.
Anaxi has partnerships with BetMGM, FanDuel, Draft Kings, Caesars Entertainment and Rush Street Interactive and is currently working with other operators across North America to bring the product to market, Morris said.
“We’re all trying to create more player engagement across the board,” he added. “The land-based casinos are looking at this as the market expands into igaming, and I think we are very well positioned to work with key partners like BetMGM and Caesars to dig in and explore some of these opportunities of how we enhance player entertainment and engagement across multiple channels.”
As they look forward to G2E, Raman said their Customer Experience Solutions group is focused on building mobilization features and creating an engaging player-focused app. Unlike most of the concierge apps that are transactional, their goal is to create engagement features that drive users to interact with the app often, ultimately generating more adoption and traffic.
“We are excited about the new engagement-based features and have given our app a completely new user-centric design which we look forward to showcasing at G2E,” said Raman.
