Veikkaus

Veikkaus improves service for their gaming terminals

The gaming company Veikkaus´s new service system is updated through the use of mobile computers delivered by Optiscan.

Veikkaus is a gaming company owned by the Finnish state. The company has a portfolio consisting of bets and pools as well as state lotteries. They have representative locations all throughout Finland. Currently, close to 80 percent of the games, worth approximately one billion euro, are made at sites such as coffee shops, petrol stations.

When it comes to gambling with real money however, mistakes cannot be made. Veikkaus has approximately 3 200 representative sites throughout Finland, and therefore an effective service organization is needed. Saturdays would be ruined for the Finnish people if something goes wrong when they are supposed to hand in their lottery tickets.

Every Veikkaus site has a gaming terminal with modules that are marked with three to four individual bar codes. If something goes wrong with a terminal, it is picked up for repair and the faulty terminal is replaced with a new one. At the beginning of 2008, Veikkaus revamped their service concept. The previous bar code readers were replaced by Datalogic Jet™ PDAs.

- The Datalogic Jets™ are very handy and equipped with a barcode reader. They are compact and make it easy to be productive, mentioned the Veikkaus service manager, Markku Kauris.

Better flow of information

If the gaming terminal malfunctions, the gaming site contacts the customer service department at Veikkaus, and if needed, a service order is created. The order is made via the GPRS network directly to the service staff´s mobile computers.

- Datalogic Jet™ also facilitates the flow of information between the morning and evening staff. Since the information about orders, work in progress and development is updated directly in the system, we all get information about each job´s status, says Kauris.

The fault is noted in the system through a code. The service technician is able to change the code when he finds the actual problem. According to Kauris, the gaming terminals being serviced are most often taken to the service center where they are cleaned from dust and dirt. Sometimes the fault is not due to a technical problem, but rather to the environment where the terminals are used.

Jobs that are not urgent can be saved in the system for future handling. Furthermore, the system can deliver orders to the sales and marketing departments such as brand names needing updated and various changes at the representative sites.

- The development possibilities with this system consist of the layout of forms and questionnaires, says Kauris.

New solution improves reporting

Veikkaus utilizes dozens of Datalogic Jet™ mobile computers. About half are used by the Veikkaus service staff, the other half by Relacom employees, who replace the terminals, and a few are used for R&D.

- The new service routines have been improved, which makes the reporting process more versatile. Now we can follow up changes, replacements and the number of units in the field, as well as control how the orders are handled and provide service analysis, says Kauris.

Jaakko Laihosalo, the application architect from Logia Software in Tampere who has developed the service software, gives a lot of credit to Datalogic Mobile´s development tools.

- It is now easier to make the software and mobile computer compatible, thanks to the sdk-tools included with the product, says Laihosalo.

Optiscan Group delivered the new terminals to Veikkaus. The sales manager at Optiscan, Mikko Laipio says that Optiscan also delivered the barcode readers that Veikkaus used previously.

- The length of life of the previous devices came to an end. And compared to today´s technology, they were quite outdated. For example, to transfer information from the memory of the terminal to the system required that the service technician returned to the service center, says Laipio.