Real-time data analytics has made it possible for the fast-paced Casino and gaming industry to stay ahead of the game. To maintain a balance between business revenue and customer experience, the industry must leverage on capturing data insights into what is happening now rather than just relying on the historical data.
BI systems used by companies in this industry should be equipped to gather data from multiple sources like in-game data, clickstreams, social media profiles, payments, transactions, marketing performance, and so on and so forth. Analyzing, comparing, and correlating these different streams as data is captured in real-time, as well as comparing those to historical data can be of great importance in this line of business. Real-time data analytics can lead to timely customer response and prediction of future behavior of players.
Although it is useful in every aspect of the business, real-time data analytics is of great importance to the risk and compliance team. Every business aims at making use of their data pool to meet the requirements of legislators and regulators without affecting the customer experience. This means taking a proactive approach to identifying and dealing with addictive behavior and problem gambling.
Larger companies have accepted that there is a need to enhance the methods used to identify harmful play across all sectors of this industry. Ensuring compliance and reducing fraud and risk by identifying unusual gaming patterns and acting upon them in real time has become very important for the business. There is a need for quicker investigation of activity, and the ability to record and track behavior to meet all needs for fraud detection and responsible gaming.
One approach is to scrutinize historical datasets for customers depicting worrisome patterns. The risk that lies in a retroactive approach is that it is usually too late for corrective action for the damage done. A real time data analytics approach increases the chances of identifying problems on time and taking the necessary action. But making sense out of disparate data sources is no piece of cake.
Casino and gaming companies need to build machine learning models, which pick up the profiles of normal player behavior. Once these profiles have been learnt, real time data analytics can be used to predict the probability of a player having an unhealthy addiction when there are disruptions to the normal behavioral patterns built in the model. This can be used to alert a Casino or gaming company when a player exhibits addictive behavior, so that the company can intervene and take corrective action.
Online gaming business involves large volumes of credit card payments. Many companies offer free credit as an incentive to attract new customers. A few customers may try to abuse these offers by using multiple or fake accounts. This kind of bonus-abuse can feed into the company’s credit risk if it happens on a large scale. Predictive analytics can be used to prevent this by building a picture of normal account activity and flagging any kind of suspicious patterns.
Casinos are required to comply with a lot of regulations in order to reduce risks, especially when it comes to money laundering. These companies stand to gain a lot from automating their processes for curbing money laundering. Automated detection software can increase the rate of detecting suspicious activity, while reducing the investigation time. By gathering customer and transaction data, compliance teams can identify the root cause of suspicious activity faster and take the necessary corrective action in time.
Casino and gaming companies need to think carefully about security when taking any big data initiative. Companies often deal with informational chaos, where different types of data are haphazardly scattered across the company. This can also undermine any kind of data protection efforts made by the company. An efficient big data platform is equipped to absorb data from multiple disparate sources and store it securely, making it accessible to the right people at the right time.
Stakes are high in the Casino and gaming world. The ones that get it right have successful and responsible business, and the ones that don’t are highly susceptible to multiple risks related to fraud, credit, money laundering, criminal spend, data breach and problem gambling. A comprehensive and proactive approach to real time data analytics can increase the odds of getting it right. In a nutshell, gambling and gaming companies need to adopt the ‘healthy customer, healthy revenue’ principle.
