hi simon thanks for joining us today hi thank you it's really cool to be here yeah it's our pleasure to have you on looking forward to talking about crm igaming and of course fast track um to start off with i thought be great if you could give us a bit of a background about yourself and the company well um cutting it short i i've been in the gaming industry for as long as i can remember and i was jumping i've been on the operator side uh pretty much all my time before fast track was the first sort of time when we started doing on a provider side um was with betfair for a long period of time and then i was with betson group for a long period of time and that was a really good learning experience coming into this and the fast track which was founded in 2016 we're obviously super active in redefining the crm space in the i-gaming industry right now what was the idea behind setting up setting fast track up did you kind of have did you see crm in action and think you know this needs some work there's a gap in the market what was that what was the idea no that was that was pretty much exactly what happened i i we sat down and we were like sort of looking at this um and this was early in 2016 and the gaming industry was was in a super exciting place at that time i'm sure you remember around 2014 2016 is one of those eras where there was just so much casinos being launched in the market and a lot of casinos there was so much movements happening in terms of um player experience in general there was in terms of the game studios the aggregate aggregators in in how you were communicating with players bonus platforms gamification systems there was like there was a real differentiation to work with player experiences and when we stepped into this um we were quite shocked you know to see how little had happened in the crm space in relation to how much innovation have had that happened in the gaming sort of industry as uh as a whole the the sort of crm aspect of the operational aspect of crm was unchanged for the for 10 years and and many of the platforms are on standstill still today so i mean you can imagine bolting on all of these different experiences from a player perspective where you're working with more providers in games that you've ever done before you have more complicated and complex and exciting gamification programs and bonus and rewards platforms and your operational procedures are sort of um you know just growing but they were just piling up on one of another right and there was no system or no way the teams and the systems were completely disjointed so the operational process was huge like there was a massive operational burden building up and this is pretty much like i'm coming on to how sort of fast track came to be in this as well because that was just a massive issue and we couldn't we couldn't see ourselves working like that ourselves when we were involved in that space yeah um so there was really no no way we could uh tackle it in that sense it was just piling up and the operational the operational depth became you know too too heavy to burden to to carry coming on to sort of how fast track um the idea around fast track i think we had quite different mindset from any other platform in in the market that was offering any sort of support crm sort of solution at the time and and it's actually really hard to compare fast track to any crm platform in the market today at all because we we we have the the platform is sort of it's probably the closest you come to building something internally then then fast track is sort of the alternative to that there is not so much when you get to know us and when you get to know the platform and how we work there is not really any other platform that compares to fast track we are not really in the same space so we wanted to redefine crm that was like sort of what we wanted to do and we had a huge motivation around digitalization and sort of fixing the operational processes in eye gaming operations and at the same time having this sort of long-term mission where we're looking at building a self-learning engagement platform we felt that you know the distribution cannot possibly be like sort of trying to have individuals in an organization matching up what campaigns are going to which player or what type of engagement you're sending at any given time it cannot possibly scale like that that doesn't make any sense um so i'm i'm coming on to a little bit sort of the um the cornerstones that fastrax sort of philosophy and our method is built on is that the first thing that we we identified was obviously data [Music] the traditional way of working with crm was to have a data transfer that happened every 24 hours and that was the first like sort of you know that doesn't that doesn't make any sense you know in the way we were delivering player experiences working in entertainment where you need to engage with people when they are on the site this is like real-time data is an absolute requirement it's a fundamental aspect of a successful player engagement strategy and then the second part was sort of i told you about this that the teams and systems completely disjointed so there was this huge barriers between different teams right and then there was all of these systems that was being used for reward platforms or for communication or for all sorts of different things and they weren't talking to each other so we needed to sort of bridge that in the infrastructure as well and say that well we both need real-time data and we need central orchestration you need to be able to do sort of everything from one place so that you have the option to automate you have the option to do these things in a in a better way and then the last point is process like when you start building these experiences like the way people were working it was just wasn't working so we had to we had to redefine working process in that as well so real-time data on one central system and the right process has been our sort of way of achieving scalability that's that's been how we have been explaining to operators that needs to happen as a fundamental sort of starting point before you can do anything else in today's eye gaming landscape what exactly and you mentioned a few things there but what exactly does the customer want what exactly does an operator want and what are the biggest pitfalls in in delivering this what are the kind of challenges you have to work around is it's a great question it's capturing a couple of different things that you said there because i i think the motivation in the industry is super clear all right at this time the motivation is super clear we want to automate we want to automate we want to do a lot of automation because we have we have noticed in particular of the regulatory frameworks like in in how that's been adding additional operational burden on top of us we want to automate we want to create one-to-one experiences very important we want to be able to be very sort of one-to-one in our engagements with with our players and number three we see this sort of the opportunity around ai right and we want to harvest that opportunity so that the motivation in the industry is super clear like it's sort of the path there that has been that that that we are helping to to sort of get operators across right um so the motivation um is super clear um what was the second part of your question sorry uh in terms of the challenges and the pitfalls of obviously in an ideal world you can deliver all these things straight away but yeah no yeah i'll get back to that so so the thing is like the motivation is really clear around one-to-one experiences and the ambition to work with ai and automation the thing is like we sometimes try to take shortcuts in this process so we try to run you know straight to the destination instead of actually stopping for a second and and asking ourselves you know do we have do we have is our business currently set up you know to be run this way because there is is quite a it's quite a big difference right between doing having a completely manual uh non-analytical sort of organization potentially um that is like sort of stepping in and then suddenly want to want to transform that into a completely data-driven organization based on automation and ai it's the path in between that i think and a lot of learnings has been made in that you have a group of operators that i think have done a lot of work internally so they invested in internal platforms they thought like there is no solution in the market just the way we found and they said like we're going to build their own internal systems in order to overcome this we're going to create those data capabilities we're going to connect the systems they wanted to be in control they did that really well but then you had a lot of other operators as well who who maybe didn't have the capacity to do that or was looking outside for a solution and there is seldom there is like very hard to find something that is just going to you know which you can just bolt on by the end of the day it's an it's an entire organization that needs to change with you so you need to have that mindset going through it all the way so that's that's definitely one pitfall the other thing that i think was a misconception was that um personalization i mean we've chosen one-to-one experiences like for a reason we don't call it personalization it's it's definitely personalization but we wanted to call it one-to-one experiences because we wanted to look after the interest both of the operator and the person that you're targeting and speaking to i mean there is if i would ask you um exactly what do you want you would give me a certain answer right and that's one one reality but i also i'm there's two parties to this right like i i also need to be able to give you within you know reasonable sort of frame i need to be able to provide you what i want within the within the frame that i want as well so we chose to call it one-to-one experiences and sometimes i can feel there's been a little bit too much focus on what the player wants rather than looking at well both parties in this relationship because by the end of the day um we need to look after the bottom line we need to make sure that this is we're building long-term relationships but also a sustainable business right so that's that's also an interesting learning and and the last one which i find very interesting is that you have um when it comes to data science and i think like the more we talk about this now we're going to step into data science and ai um i think organizations are learning that now is you're not going to be able to sort of outsource that like all the way you're going to have to build the internal capacity to manage for your own decision making this is what it's about building data models and ai this is about decision making and you can't you can't really outsource that decision making you can you can use outsourced solutions to support you to bootstrap you to get you up and running um but it has to be a conscious investment you know absolutely yeah um you've mentioned sierra mini gaming and how it's changed the last few years um how was uh a how has fast track kind of played its part into the picture there and b i'm also interested how has crm kind of in our gaming compared to crm generally and in other industries during this time so like i'm i'm not particularly interested in in what the other industries are doing because the eye gaming industry is very different from any other industry and that's what i love about it there is there is so much complexity compared to to um to sort of e-commerce or retail or any of them obviously we are keeping a really good eye on if they're coming up with good stuff you know like we obviously keeping that as a flow input but we also have to recognize that the eye gaming industry is very very different we are having we have to manage responsible gaming and you know sort of those things we have to manage risk from an operator perspective this is like cash you know it's a cash business right there is a there is an incentive to um for people to do both the wrong things and and have fun so i mean we we have to manage that in that um so um fasttrack has we have sort of redefined crm and we with our sort of concept of real-time data one central system and process we were the first ones that that moved in that direction and we established that and we proven that in the industry and um what what essentially has happened from that as a very quick effect has been that we have managed to prove that you are you're you're more than 40 more efficient or effective working with the fast track sort of platform compared to any other platform in the market today so i think that's like a super big milestone in terms of just proving that that recipe you know actually works we we have to we have to free up time before we can reinvest that time in sort of um getting our organizations into into this change right so what we have done is that we have we have launched something that we we refer to internally as the fast track pathway but it's really a methodology it's a five-step program and we put all of our partners onto that program in one way or another which means that we start by exploring how we can free up time right so we put fast track in as a platform and by using the fast track platform with real-time data one central system and the right work process we can cut back easily 40 but in many times it's up to 60 of the time that is needed in order to execute the same agenda that you have done previously we then take that time and we we motivate as a second step that the operator invests that we invested in automation and then we are like again automating the distribution process which means that the crm teams suddenly has time for the creative process and start analyzing so the third step in this is when we start looking at how we can find bright spots in what the operator is doing and we try to find what re what works and scale that and that's what we are then scaling into one-to-one experiences so if we identify for example that um you know there is a as easy as a preferred communication channel and that it's being prioritized in the best way i mean that's that's something that has been that we have managed to prove at least that it's not always better uh to to communicate on an sms for example you can use you can use other means and you can do that very efficiently and that's just one example of finding a bright spot uh by prioritizing communication channel we can create one-to-one experiences where we're sending for example that instead of something else same goes for different reward types or for tonality or or anything like that so scaling with one-to-one experiences is is where it's at and then ultimately leading to proactively be able to identify what to do um in a self-learning environment where sort of if i do something if if the system chooses to do something what does that have as an as an outcome over time how is that going to lead to something over a longer term which is the fifth step which we call self-learning i wanted to pick up on your point about automation and uh crm teams is there a chance that crm teams can uh can maybe see automation as a bit of a bit of a threat uh what happens to them if let's say everything more most processes are fully automated you mentioned obviously they may have more time for creativity that kind of thing yeah no but this is this is like um they should embrace that change like in in terms of working as a crm team right now the last thing you want to do like you think you're hired in order to come up with the creative concepts of how to engage players but what you're actually ending up doing is to is to sort of you know endless deadlines that is just like trying to uh firefight to get the campaigns out on time i mean that there's like automation is an absolute neces necessity in order for you to create a foundation as a brand to be able to grow from and the crm team their team you know they're going to be able to focus on what they were there to do in the beginning which is focused on the creative process do analyses and come out with conclusions in order to drive better engagement not just getting the job done if you know what i mean yes that's um that's definitely an opportunity for everyone sure yeah and in terms of everything we've talked about you know we delved in some very interesting areas in crm and our gaming final topic i really wanted to discuss with you is it's sort of looking ahead firstly fast track are you guys working on any kind of new exciting products right now that you're getting into the market uh soon or whenever that may be we we are actually we are we are about to announce some really really big news in in october so it's going to come towards the end of october but it's completely in line with it's just us evolving with that with the program that we have set out that we believe in which are these different five steps i think we have come a really long way in terms of you know setting up organizations in the right way in order to to approach that next thing and we are doing some really exciting product releases now and we are um going to make a lot of things happen in the in the machine learning and ai space and it's going to go very quickly from here on um because of the infrastructure and the and the position that we have assumed right now and what we have developed internally so i'm really excited about october when i can tell everyone about that sure and then looking a little bit further out into 2022 um what are kind of your goals and fast tracks goals for the year ahead we want to we want to continue to to sort of make sure that as many operators as possible get the opportunity to to see what we have in store and that we um that we can obviously show them how how this sort of reality can change how their operation is working and how they can transform their businesses as well and um it's it's like uh right now there is a lot of focus for us on on really really taking on the one-to-one and the self-learning experiences and we're going to grow in that space so it's it's a very very intensive ai agenda and how we're going to be supporting businesses to to help them step into that and providing them with the tech platforms and that allows them both to take advantage of what fasttrack can provide as a bootstrap but in particular how we can help them build efficient internal data science teams and that can build their own and evolve their own models over time well it sounds like a like a busy year ahead but certainly one with with plenty to look forward to and uh uh yeah thank you very much simon for joining us and for your time and your answers today no but thank you very much it's super cool uh being here and i'm sure we're going to speak soon again absolutely cheers thanks very much thank you dan thank you