Pegasus system gains ground
The Pegasus Players Club made its debut in the Montana gaming market one-and-a-half years ago. Since then they have signed up 48 establishments, 15 just since the implementation of the full smoking ban Oct. 1 of 2009.
Their most recent innovation is the addition of a flat-screen monitor to broadcast and enliven in-house automated promotional events that are taking place. It can also be programmed to run in-house advertising.
The Montana Tavern Times met with company principle Jim McCarthy at the Oasis Casino in Butte April 19. He demonstrated the system's features such as its built-in events for players club points multipliers, prize give-a-ways and cash drawings.
One of these events almost plays like a keno game. It illustrates a gaming floor schematic, with machine icons being lit randomly at a decreasing speed until it stops ... on one machine which, if being played, will award that player bonus points.
McCarthy said the Pegasus system is designed for maximum flexibility to allow a high degree of customization for any given location, especially when determining event frequency, hours, and prize award levels. Completely customized promotions proprietary to a particular establishment can be produced as well, McCarthy said.
"We get great owner feedback which we routinely use in developing the system," he said. "We've made over 200 updates since the original update" which are uploaded to locations when they are closed. "We have owners say, 'I wish it did this,' and, two days later, it does!"
Where the Pegasus system has been installed, McCarthy said owners are seeing substantial increases in minutes played and machine income.
"The gaming business is very competitive. An operator needs all the edges they can get," he said.
"The economy and smoking ban has made the gaming business tough," McCarthy said, "but our clients appear to be faring better than most and are showing some recovery. The Pegasus Players Club is contributing but it still comes down to high quality customer service."
With that in mind, the Pegasus system is designed to initiate more interaction between customers and staff," McCarthy said.
McCarthy said the company analyzed casino client data for the four months prior to Oct. 1, then the four months after. They saw a decline of around 18 percent. But since the bottom, McCarthy says machine drop is up 25 percent, hold is up 15 percent and minutes played is up 31 percent, essentially recovering 10 of the 18 percent lost.
With a Pegasus system comes promotional posters, "machine stickies," even outdoor banners.
The Pegasus system relies on machine meter readings primarily, as opposed to simply measuring seat-time," McCarthy said. Getting the readings is another opportunity for staff to have a personal interaction with customers.
McCarthy said their system is designed by folks with a broad computing background, and so data acquisition and its accuracy has been taken to the forefront. "The data will show an owner a lot about their business operation. Nine essential reports are included and are generated daily. More can be customized and added.
"We can tailor the system to help owners realize specific business objectives," McCarthy said.
The folks at Pegasus are aware of how critical quality support is to ongoing automated systems users. "We have support 24-hours a day, seven days a week," he said. "The system is easy to learn and we're finding it is extremely reliable. After the first 90 days, there are virtually no issues. In fact, we're only getting two or three problems a month over the whole system.
"We'll get you a response. We have a good record and we're proud of it. No one has ever been down for long, a few minutes at most."
McCarthy said usually a one-hour training session with staff is enough. "Even people who don't know computers get it.”
The system includes a mailing module for direct mail marketing applications and incorporates several different access levels for staff, management and ownership. It allows for the establishment of player rating tiers.
It is also designed to produce prompts when ownership scrutiny is required, such as in the case of suspected abuse of the system. McCarthy said if, for example, a player was fabricated by a staffer, the system would red flag the anomaly where only one staffer ever "services" the fictitious customer. "We can run audits designed to catch cheating and can show owners what to watch for."
The system can be leased with a $5,000 start-up fee, then a monthly $500 operating fee. That includes all the hardware, software and licensing, plus installation, training and 90 days support. Upgrades are ongoing and they are included. Security software and firewalls are installed.
"We have some very exciting concepts coming; maybe we'll be able to announce them in August or so. These new concepts will separate us from the competition," McCarthy said.
"These days, things have changed," McCarthy said. "Operators need all the customer information they can get in order to make better decisions. It's all about value-added gaming, keeping your customers happy.
"It's the best investment any operator can make, and we can prove it. We have customers who are getting 10-times return on their investment. Our customers must make money for us to be successful.
"Folks just need to remember, you can't replace the human touch with technology."