Inside Asian Gaming

December 2014 inside asian gaming 37 Inside Asian Gaming caught up with CPI President of Gaming Eric Fisher at the show to ask how far the new company has come in the complex merger process. IAG : What stage are you at in your integration? Mr Fisher: The stage that we’ve reached is stability. We’ve stabilized the organization so our sales and technical support people now know all our brands and service them well. As a result, our customers can speak with only one point of contact to get everything they need. From an internal standpoint, it will get even better when we’ve completed our SAP [sales and purchases] implementation and our sales people can use a single system to place and track customer orders. As good as it was before, we aspire to gain additional advantages for customers. That’s still coming. How about advantages for you as a company? For us as a company it’s been fantastic to have a full portfolio. If you look at MEI’s strength in notes and Crane Payment Solutions’ strength in coins—both with acceptors and recyclers—the two mesh really, really well. So now, having a complete portfolio of coins and notes to offer customers, we are a one-stop- shop across automated payment systems. The combined entity must have expanded your geographical reach? It’s helped in terms of geography, and application as well. In certain locations MEI did well, in other locations Crane Payment Solutions did well. In certain applications, such as retail self-checkout, MEI did very well with note acceptors, whereas the coin side was all Crane Payment Solutions. So now we get the whole package, and it works out great. Having the ability to get in with a product, then be able to introduce the whole suite, and provide the service to back it all up, really shows our worth. It allows us to be more profitable because people recognize the value of dealing with one supplier who does everything well. Now we have the opportunity to bundle products and provide complete solutions to our customers. So what’s happening on the R&D side? If you look at MEI historically, more than 10% of our revenue went toward R&D. We’re continuing this as a joint entity. So now there’s even more. We’re still working to further consolidate our engineering activities, but nobody in the industry offers more engineers than we have. Crane acquired MEI to create a full portfolio of payment systems with CPI. And putting those R&D resources, marketing resources and sales resources on payment systems will make us a more effective supplier. Other companies that have consolidated are becoming more similar to broad range distributors, whereas we remain focused, as the industry’s expert, on payment systems. What’s been happening in Asia recently? Asia’s been a big contributor to our business, and now the region’s on the cusp Tech Talk of another boom. After a lull in Macau, we’ve got these new properties opening. We’re really excited about Galaxy Macau opening next year and all the other Cotai openings that will follow. We’re continuing to do well in the Philippines, and as new properties continue to come on line we’ll pursue them as well. We’ve got an eye on Cambodia, and we’re obviously monitoring Japan. There’s lots going on. And, of course, internationally we’ve done very well in the VLT market. Across Canada, Oregon and Illinois we’ve reached nearly 50,000 deployments of the SC Advance. And we’re obviously very interested in what’s happening in Greece, which could open up 35,000 games. “Having the ability to get in with a product, then be able to introduce the whole suite, and provide the service to back it all up, really shows our worth. It allows us to be more profitable because people recognize the value of dealing with one supplier who does everything well.” Eric Fisher CPI President of Gaming The motivation behind Crane Co.’s acquisition of MEI to create Crane Payment Innovations was clearly strategic and eminently sensible. MEI mainly specializes in cash, currency, physical bills and notes, while Crane Payment Solutions’ products primarily handled coins. By bringing the two together, the new brand, CPI, promises the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of cash management solutions.