Will Provance remembers days when the drop team for the Hard Rock Sacramento casino consisted of only two people.
The COVID pandemic had forced the tribal casino, formally known as Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sacramento at Fire Mountain, to close just four months after its grand opening. Hard Rock reopened two months later. However, a regional labor shortage reduced staffing to bare bones in many instances, including the collection of cash boxes from hundreds of slot machines and table games in use even with social distancing measures.
It was “a disaster in all rights,” said Provance, Hard Rock Sacramento’s senior vice president of operations.
With the help of JCM Global’s FUZION system, which monitors the contents of each drop box on the casino floor, the short-staffed drop team pinpointed which ones to collect.
“They were able to target the cans going off capacity percentages instead of wasting time dropping empty or near-empty cans,” Provance said. “It saved us in a pretty bleak moment.”
The system is a benefit in more normal times as well. “It keeps the most popular games active during our busiest times and allows our slot team to focus on other things than executing emergency drops,” he said.
Real-time cash box data is one element of JCM Global’s FUZION technology, which can continuously monitor and analyze virtually every casino device with JCM peripherals. With an installation completed in December, Hard Rock Sacramento became the first casino to deploy the FUZION system throughout its gaming floor. Resorts World Las Vegas, which opened last month, was the second.
Dave Kubajak, senior vice president of sales, marketing, and operations at JCM Global, said Hard Rock’s FUZION system includes three modules:
- ICB Intelligent Cash Box System
- PromoNet, which allows slot machines to generate rewards and other marketing for uncarded as well as carded players
- Peripheral Management, which gives managers the ability to monitor data from each machine in real time
“The fact that you have the ability to see this information in real time makes your operation so much more efficient. It also improves your guest experience as the machines’ uptime is improved and bill acceptance rates remain at their highest level,” Kubajak said.
Provance said Hard Rock uses PromoNet to target uncarded players with offers directly at the game. “It has resulted in additional signups as we continue to grow our database, and also serves as a reminder to those players who have a card who might not have been using it at the time,” he said. “It helps grow our player database and increase our carded play.”
PromoNet lets casino managers set about 20 parameters – including time on device, average bet, and win or loss rate – to trigger offers while someone is playing.
Uncarded players might receive a free-play offer that can be redeemed by joining the players club. “The uncarded player is extremely valuable, and the more difficult one to do,” Kubajak said.
Carded players also can receive offers at the machine. Kubajak said that before PromoNet, carded players at Hard Rock Sacramento would have to wait several days to receive mail promotional offers based on their play. Response to mail offers was less than 10 percent, he said, but with the PromoNet offers in hand before customers leave the property, the redemption rate could top 40 percent.
The Peripheral Management module connects every device – including bill validators, redemption kiosks, printers, and ATMs – to the FUZION system. Kubajak said that allows “predictive management,” such as notifying staffers which slot machines need a TITO paper refill, keeping the machine from being taken out of service.
“iVIZION bill validators take high-resolution images of each bill or ticket put into a slot machine, and then FUZION analyzes the bills for serial numbers to resolve any disputes. Only JCM Global offers that technology,” Kubajak said.
He also said the FUZION system greatly accelerates security updates. Instead of updating firmware machine by machine, FUZION’s real-time connections allow the task to be done en masse. He said a recent update at Hard Rock Sacramento, which has more than 1,600 slots, took about 45 minutes, compared with two to three weeks for a similar casino without FUZION.
Hard Rock and JCM Global began talks about the FUZION system before the Sacramento casino opened. “Each of the modules has bits and pieces of Hard Rock’s guidance inside of it, and they’ve helped shape our technology roadmap,” Kubajak said. “The solutions we bring to market are developed in partnership with our customers.”
Provance echoed that. “The ongoing work that their team has put forth during the three years we have been working together has been impressive. JCM has been a great partner to Hard Rock and is committed to our success.”
