52 Indian Gaming November 2010 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY T he economic success of casinos in these lean times depends on their ability to flexibly and quickly react to changes in their operating environment. There is growing interest among the operators in improving the efficiency and quality of their business processes and aligning their in-house information systems to become more process aware. Questions like “What processes can be automated?” or “What processes need to be eliminated?” have to be answered in a methodical and analytical manner. The Business Process Management (BPM) discipline and framework can be employed to answer these questions. What is BPM? The Wikipedia definition of BPM is as follows “BPM is a management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It is a holistic management approach that promotes business effec- tiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibil- ity, and integration with technology. Business process manage- ment attempts to improve processes continuously. It could therefore be described as a ‘process optimization process.’ It is argued that BPM enables organizations to be more efficient, more effective and more capable of change than a functionally focused, traditional hierarchical management approach.” BPM’s Importance in Today’s Environment Business processes are at the heart of what makes or breaks a casino and what differentiates it from the immediate competition. Some of the casino operators are doing BPM consciously and some are not. But BPM is part of all casino operations on a daily basis. Business processes that deliver operational efficiency, business visibility and agility give the enterprise the edge by enabling it to conduct business in a low cost, flexible way, and to see all the changes and turmoil in the marketplace as an opportunity. Business Process Management for Casinos by Ram Patrachari
Transcript
52 Indian Gaming November 2010
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Theeconomic success of casinos in these lean times dependson their ability to flexibly and quickly react to changes in
their operating environment. There is growing interest amongthe operators in improving the efficiency and quality of theirbusiness processes and aligning their in-house informationsystems to become more process aware. Questions like“What processes can be automated?” or “What processes needto be eliminated?” have to be answered in a methodical andanalytical manner. The Business Process Management (BPM)discipline and framework can be employed to answer thesequestions.
What is BPM?The Wikipedia definition of BPM is as follows “BPM is a
management approach focused on aligning all aspects of anorganization with the wants and needs of clients. It is aholistic management approach that promotes business effec-
tiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibil-ity, and integration with technology. Business process manage-ment attempts to improve processes continuously. It couldtherefore be described as a ‘process optimization process.’ Itis argued that BPM enables organizations to be more efficient,more effective and more capable of change than a functionallyfocused, traditional hierarchical management approach.”
BPM’s Importance in Today’s EnvironmentBusiness processes are at the heart of what makes or breaks a
casino andwhat differentiates it from the immediate competition.Someof the casinooperators are doingBPMconsciously and someare not. But BPM is part of all casino operations on a daily basis.Business processes that deliver operational efficiency, businessvisibility and agility give the enterprise the edge by enabling itto conduct business in a low cost, flexible way, and to see all thechanges and turmoil in the marketplace as an opportunity.
Business Process Management for Casinos
by Ram Patrachari
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Benefits of BPMBPM solutions consistently deliver impressive results,
primarily because there is somuchhidden inefficiency in businessprocesses that has evolved in a paper-based, manually intensivecasino environment. Someof the high level benefits are as follows:
Improved efficiency in casino operations: By cutting downon lag time, removing the need for reentering of data, and pro-viding exactly the right information to a user at the right time,a BPM software application can deliver substantial efficiencysavings within a casino.
Improved visibility of process efficiency and performance:Have you ever wondered what happened to the slot move thatyou requested a week back or where that requisition is that yousigned? These are common business process questions thatget asked in most of the casinos. Most BPM applications offera twofold approach to this. One allows managers to reviewprocess performance in real time and adapt their casinopersonnel to apply extra power to processes or tasks encoun-tering a peak of activity. The other allows managers to analyzeprocess performance over time, enabling an assessment ofprocess weak points and bottlenecks.
Process adherence / regulatory compliance: Once established,processes are controlled and not subject to modification with-out a reason; a task cannot normally progress to the next stepuntil it has been marked as completed, and the chain of eventsin an end-to-end process need all events to be completed inorder for the process itself to be successfully closed. Enforce-ment is therefore naturally inherent in any BPM process.
Getting business to think about processes: The whole BPMlifecycle tends to get all involved thinking in a more process-centric way, because in order to optimize the usefulness of theBPM software, stakeholders begin to consider how best theprocess can serve them.
Managing resources better in a process enabled environ-ment: As with better monitoring of process performance,BPM also facilitates closer measurement and monitoring ofresource performance. This could support an organization’sresource requirement planning by showing where delays occurin any process due to insufficient or inappropriate resource. Thediagram on the following page illustrates a business process flowthat has three groups interacting in a casino.
54 Indian Gaming November 2010
Cost containment and reduction: Because process time andresource time can be accurately measured by a BPM applica-tion, a realistic view of the cost of a process can be calculated.The project management institute’s framework for costmanagement and control can be employed here.
Quality management and quality assurance: BPM canprovide indications regarding the quality of a deliverable. Forexample, if monitoring of a casinomanagement system requiresa fix and this ismanaged as part of an end-to-end business process,any repetition of a failure in the process can be flagged to indi-cate that the original fix may not have met a quality threshold.
Cycle time reduction: As previously discussed, a BPM processcan serve to minimize lag time in a process. In many manualprocesses one of the most significant causes of delay is that oneuser is not aware that the previous task has been completed andthat their work can commence. This makes the processes eventdriven instead of being based purely on time intervals.
Change management: The ability to modify processes torespond tomarket forces or regulatory changes, while retainingcontrol over existing process instances, is one of the key strengthsof BPM. It allows new versions of a process to be introducedwithout impacting those instances of the pre-existing processworking their way through the system. This capability enablesbusinesses to remain agile in the way they respond to changing
circumstances, while retaining full control over the work inhand and the statistics that work provides.
Business Process Improvement (BPI) KeyConsiderations
Any BPI initiative in an organization has to deal with boththe technological and cultural issues in an organization whenimplementing a BPI initiative. Some of the key considerationswhen implementing a BPI initiative are as below:
• Business process needs to be aligned with the casino’sbusiness goals and objectives.
• The process needs to be aligned with higher guestsatisfaction. The BPI initiative should give key consid-eration to customer and guest inputs.
• The rule of “what cannot be measured, cannot beimproved upon” should be taken to heart. BPI places alot of importance on measurable results. The yardstickfor measurable results are benchmarks. The benchmarkscan be internal, external or promulgated by seniormanagement based on strategic imperatives.
• A clear understanding of what constitutes success orfailure of the process by all stakeholders is key. Thesuccess criteria then establishes “control limits” for the
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
November 2010 Indian Gaming 55
process and provides a way to monitor whether thedefined objectives/goals are being met.
Getting started with BPMThe executive management will have to sponsor the
BPM effort if the plan is to get the whole casino involved inthe BPM effort. To test drive the effort a small initiative canbe started within the departments. IT can be the right placeto start the initiative if a casino has the right people and the rightinfrastructure in place. The following step by step approach canbe taken to jump start the effort:
• Determine where the casino organization is with respectto the maturity model. Is it more towards the taskdriven approach or towards a process driven approach.The casino management can get an inventory of theskill set in house to determine what strengths and weak-ness exist within the organization.
• Determine the casino organization culture. Theprocess driven approach brings a fresh perspective to thedifferent operations within the casino. These changes canbe perceived as both an opportunity as well as a threat.How well such change can be implemented and whatbenefit can be realized will be dependent on the existingculture.
• Understanding the different roles and skill setnecessary for a successful BPM implementation is key.From the executive sponsor to the various staff respon-sibilities to perform the discovery, modeling, analysis,evaluation, process architecting, process designing, andprocess integration and into the deployment stage, includ-ing change management, continuous measurement andongoing optimization of processes, will need people whohave been trained or have the necessary skills in place.
A getting started checklist below summarizes the keydeliverables for a BPM initiative:
• Objective, goals and strategy
• Casino wide communication plan
• BPM steering committee
• Identify top BPI initiatives and opportunities
• Select the methodology of rolling out the initiative
• Assigning project roles and responsibilities
• Engaging with outside consulting companies if theskill set is not available in-house
• Develop a well thought out business case
• Identify business results and process measurementcriteria
• Getting the essentials of a project plan together –implementation plan, communication plan, vendorstrategy, procurement strategy, personnel plan
• Benchmark and evaluate results each step of the way
• Expand the effort enterprise wide
ConclusionBPM is a cultural change for an organization. It has elements
of both technology and people mixed together. Each casinoorganization has to customize the effort based on its ownculture and personnel. The benefits of a process drivenorganization are huge. It offers immense flexibility and oppor-tunity in adjusting to business climate and conditions. Viejasstarted on the BPM journey about a year back. Some of theautomation of critical manual processes has enabled the casinoto operate with greater flexibility and increased efficiency. Inone particular instance service times to service critical guestneeds have been improved by over 300%. We at Viejas havejust scratched the surface with BPM and have a long journeyahead of us. �
Ram Patrachari is VP of Information Technology at ViejasEnterprises managed by Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians.He can be reached by calling (619) 659-1838 or [email protected].
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