Las Vegas-based data-platform company OPTX has just turned three years old. It has accomplished many things in that short span and has plenty more innovations coming in the future, according to Brooke Fiumara, OPTX co-CEO.
OPTX is a data platform that focuses on ingesting the data from the disparate systems within a casino and turning that into operational functionality in areas of slots, marketing, and player development.
“It’s been an amazing three years and honestly, it’s just beginning,” Fiumara said. “When you think about the timing in which we started the company, half of our time in existence was under the uncertainty of COVID. It was an interesting time to start a company with ambitious goals like we had.”
During the last three years, Fiumara said OPTX products were selected by more than 40 casino-resorts. It has developed and released seven products and has integrated into all of the major systems, plus many ancillary systems, Fiumara said.
“We have built an incredibly talented team that would rival the best in the industry,” Fiumara said. “When I started OPTX, we had two team members. Today, we have more than 50 employees in three different countries and we’re still growing. That’s a huge accomplishment.”
OPTX has moved out of its starter office and has a new headquarters, which occupies more than three times its original space.
“I think one of our best and biggest accomplishments is that we have become subject-matter experts and built a reputation as such in data expertise,” Fiumara said. “All products like OPTX require a deep understanding and knowledge of gaming data and at this point in our company, we now know and understand all of the major manufacturers. There are no more firsts for us.”
Fiumara said their team, from a data-observation standpoint, proactively monitors all of the data feeds coming into OPTX on a 24/7 basis to ensure a consistent and accurate flow.
OPTX is expanding its territory and focused on being recognized as the global leader in this space, Fiumara said.
“We have intentionally kept our focus purely on the U.S., and now we’re at a point in time where the product growth and growth in the U.S. have presented a natural progression in the organization to expand territory.”
OPTX is also focused on expanding its partnership with other suppliers. There is no shortage of new data sets that are available from new suppliers and the last thing an operator wants to do is log into another system to utilize their siloed data to find insights or action, Fiumara said.
“What we do really well is bring in all of those different sources of data and provide insight and action on the aggregate of data,” Fiumara said. “Continuing to expand our partnerships with other suppliers to help make their data more actionable for the operators is another focus of ours.”
OPTX will also continue to enhance its products, Fiumara said. It’s not a company that develops tools and leaves them alone. Instead, it is constantly improving the products it offers.
“Usability is a top priority for us and we have teams dedicated to ensuring that users are getting the most that OPTX has to offer,” Fiumara said. “When we receive requests from OPTX users, we turn those requests into enhancements and work with our engineering team to put them into the product. We don’t charge our clients for those requests. It just helps make sure the product is continuously working for the people using it.”
OPTX does new releases on a monthly basis, which means users always have something new to explore, Fiumara said.
Steve Bright, OPTX’s new vice president of data science, is bringing cutting-edge artificial-intelligence models to products, Fiumara said. That’s taking the guesswork out of reporting and AI models continue to be a focus.
“We really put the science in data science,” Fiumara said. “We’re always experimenting with new ways to increase performance on the floor and the database. Perfecting those AI models is a time-consuming collaboration between us and our clients. We just don’t develop a model, then forget it. Our models go through continuous improvement and are always in the process of refinement of the results, but also through the feedback from our clients. We call it the ‘decision-making co-pilot’ and from an AI and product perspective, from OPTX, you will continue to see the best that gaming has to offer in our tool.”
Slot Dispatch is a product launching soon, an integrated solution for automated real-time events across the slot floor. It’s a mobile-first product that has supporting web-application reporting, analytics, and dashboards and will be sold as a new module in the suite of OPTX products.
“It will allow slot teams to manage guest service and maintenance of the slot floors through a user-friendly modern approach to dispatch,” Fiumara said. “OPTX dispatch will provide functionality for slot teams to manage machine-level events and issues in real time. Because Dispatch will be integrated into the entire suite of OPTX products, users will have one application where they can manage operations across the property.”
Fiumara said they’re also focused on their enterprise solutions and making sure that OPTX can work for properties of all sizes.
“From the small single property operations to the largest enterprises in gaming, our goal is truly to be recognized as the leader for all operations of all sizes,” Fiumara said.
