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Kaleidovision Web Portal Simplifies Gala Bingo Pricing Complexities

Gala Bingo, the industry's leading bingo operator, has taken a pioneering approach to managing the rapid evolution of the game and its associated pricing complexities.

Eager to embrace new technology, the company - part of the Gala Coral Group - has tasked Kaleidovision, its long time supplier of digital content, with developing a web portal aimed at simplifying book sales and speeding up entry at front-of-house. By embracing new interactive technology in favour of the static 2D posters that have traditionally characterised the experience, Gala Bingo would be able to refocus its marketing on a younger demographic.

"Pricing within the bingo sector is much more complex that you might initially think," confirms Kaleidovision's business development manager, Richard Smith. "The fact that there are up to 11 different games covering the morning, afternoon and evening sessions, with different tariffs according to peak and off-peak trading, presents its own difficulties. The products themselves change regularly and on top of that there are local variations. Gala therefore wanted to consolidate this into a main menu board."

How to factor in all these variations, while at the same time making the system operator-friendly for staff, was the task facing Kaleidovision's chief information officer Paul Buckthorpe and his technical team.

For the past year some 157 Gala Bingo sites have been fed from Kaleidovision's standard one- and two-output digital media servers, via a central distribution server based in Nottingham.

"We needed to retain this existing infrastructure - but expand the software to increase functionality," Buckthorpe explained. "The technical challenge was to create intuitive user interface screens (UIS) for the sites to enter the information, with sufficient built-in flexibility to handle the pricing variations required by each club. By introducing some simple guidelines and pricing templates we were able to deliver a solution that presents clear pricing to the customer and is easy to maintain by the club manager."

He explained how Kaleidovision had set about the task. "The solution requires prices to be entered locally by the club and then displayed on the screens using our KL2 system. To achieve this we developed a browser-based interface and then merged the data with XML based templates to produce the screen output. These templates also contained timing information that was integrated with the KL2 scheduler to ensure the correct pricing was displayed at the appropriate time of day."

Only screen technology can deliver the modern solution, believes Buckthorpe, as modern bingo has far outgrown the static poster information format (and associated waste). "Now, with plasma displays mounted at each pay point, customers can clearly see the prices for the current session whilst standing in the queue, giving them time to decide which options they require before arriving at the desk. This has significantly sped up the traffic flow and as a result customers can enter the club far more quickly and the queue lengths have been reduced - making for a nicer customer experience."

Removing a massive layer of administration and simplifying Kaleidovision's own studio time has also resulted in significant cost savings. "In the past it would have taken at least a couple of hours a day in our studio to produce different posters for individual sites," says Richard Smith. "Previously, with the ever-changing pricing structures we were forever advising individual units how they could manage promotions locally and centrally."

With the new system already trialling in eight of the company's premier sites, early signs are that the pricing portal is proving to be a useful and popular business tool for public and staff alike.

Gala Bingo's head of engineers and Linknet, Darren Nickless, confirmed that his company had been able to install the system at source in new-builds at Hull and Clydebank, while being able to retrofit it into the other six venues.

"The original concept of removing all the pieces of paper by putting in a full digital system was floated over a year ago. The customer reaction has been very good and the KV technology has been a good choice as it supports motion graphic design on the screen."

Gala Bingo have hardly been technophobes when it comes to embracing the digital world and the development of this project will be ongoing. In fact the company is already contemplating the next portal development - which will enable it to take control over the local marketing messages displayed on the screens, further reducing the need for posters.

In picture: Gala Bingo, Hull

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Kaleidovision Web Portal Simplifies Gala Bingo Pricing Complexities

11th February 2009

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