It’s taken a long time for JCM Global ’s iV8 table game bill validator to evolve from prototype to final product. As General Manager of New Business Development Kunal Mishra explains, that’s because the company prefers to patiently evaluate and refine its new creations before selling them—sacrificing short-term gains but potentially creating best of breed products that have longevity as market leaders. That’s what JCM has managed with its main earner, the iVIZION bill validator for slots, and what it looks poised to repeat with the iV8
JCM Global’s iV8 table game bill validator is finally set to be rolled out onto casino floors across Asia, three years after the release of the initial prototype. In the intervening period, the company conducted thorough field research and gathered detailed customer feedback, on the basis of which it thoroughly refined the product, making a host of changes ranging from making It more dealer-friendly to adding a light in the escrow chamber at the request of casino surveillance departments. The latest version of the iV8 on display at the JCM stand at last month’s G2E Asia is also decidedly more compact and sleeker than the rather clunky 2011 prototype.
Kunal Mishra, JCM Global’s general manager of new business development, acknowledges the product could have been rushed to market sooner. “You can take a short cut many times that leads to short-term pain.” But perfection can’t be rushed, and by taking the time to fine-tune the iV8, Mr Mishra believes it offers the best achievable solution to the business problem it was designed to address. “And that problem is ‘How do you increase hands per hour at casino tables?’ Everyone who comes into a casino has a finite timethat they can gamble. The casino wants to maximize the decisions per hour. And certainly they still have to be wary of security, so be cautious of accepting only good money.”
In high-volume cash markets such as Macau and Singapore, manually counting and validating currency during buy-ins can shut down play for minutes at a time. By processing eight notes per second, the iV8—“iV” stands for “intelligent validation,” the 8 for the processing speed—enables more hands to be played. “In certain markets where the amounts of money wagered is very high this product’s potential ROI [return on investment] is almost on the first day you use it,” claims Mr Mishra. Another benefit is that by eliminating downtime during buy-ins, the iV8 “increases the entertainment value for the customer as well.”
Mr Mishra is justifiably proud of the development effort behind the iV8. Not only has JCM invented an all-new product category with clear revenue-boosting potential for its customers, but it has also wisely invested sufficient time and resources in refining the iV8 to ensure that it remains the market leader in that category even when other manufacturers inevitably come out with competing products. “I’m an engineer by trade,” says Mr Mishra. “I believe you design to a standard, not a specification. Designing to a standard means you create the best of breed product. A specification means you cater to the minimum needs of the market. And based on my engineering background, I’m committed to building a product to the highest standard. And that’s what the iV8 represents today.
“We have a fantastic team in Japan who’ve designed this product, and who have reacted thoughtfully to customer input. And while development has taken a few years, from the perspective of hardware development of such a customized product, the process has gone very smoothly.
The iV8 is currently in back-office trials, “and we expect to get on the floor very, very soon,” says Mr Mishra. Although it was originally conceived to serve the extremely high-volume Macau market, he says the company has received interest in it from “markets across the Asia Pacific region, and even as far south as Australia.”
The initial target markets for the iV8 “are what I classify as our tier 1 markets: Macau, Singapore and Australia,” explains Mr Mishra. “We expect to go into 1A markets like the Philippines shortly thereafter.” The other highlight product at JCM’s G2E Asia stand was the iVIZION bill validator for slot machines, a fixture in casinos worldwide and the flagship for JCM’s fleet of “intelligent validation” technologies. According to Mr Mishra: “It was released about three and a half years ago, but it’s still the preferred choice of operators because when it was developed and envisaged and when it was deployed, it was literally a spaceship when everything else was a bicycle.
“Certainly the competition has come up significantly, but the lead iVIZION had has still not been closed. For example, I haven’t seen any of the major competitors with CIS [Contact Image Sensor] technology, which is really the backbone of validation.”
According to JCM, the CIS technology that forms the heart of the iVIZION delivers better than a 99% acceptance rate on valid banknotes and near-total counterfeit protection. The iVIZION is also equipped with two high-speed processors, a sealed note path and a patented, removable stacker mechanism that ensure the notes always flow smoothly, quickly and efficiently, while the RFID ICB cashbox has the data-capturing and transmission well in hand.
JCM also makes ongoing enhancements to the iVIZION to stay ahead of the competition “We’ve released multiple cash boxes with it, because in some markets the standard cash box of 600 or 1,000 just wasn’t adequate, so we’ve released a high-capacity cash box,” reveals Mr Mishra. “We’ve also released a version that has no cash box in it should the client want a free-fall option. And we’ve added accessories like the Sentry 2 [the industry’s first display bezel that enables operators to send messages to their customers via the iVIZION].”
With the iV8 and iVIZION, JCM now has strong offerings for both the table and slots sides of the casino business. “Asia is a table gamecentric market. There’s no doubt about it,” says Mr Mishra. “But the slot market is also a vibrant one here. And with the expansion on the Cotai Strip and the casinos in the Philippines opening up, for a company that provides equipment for the entire casino floor, I’d say this is the best time to be here.
“Asia in my opinion is very different than markets in the rest of the world,” observes Mr Mishra. “It’s a high-utilization market per square foot of gaming space. When you go to America and other markets like that, they don’t have high-utilization, they have a higher count of machines with a lower utilization factor.
“When you go to Asia, especially look around the casinos in Macau, it’s hard to find a place to even stand at a table. And sometimes the machines are all full. So it’s a high-utilization market, and you can’t use products that you’ve created for high-volume markets in high-utilization markets. That’s why in Asia we need a different set of products, and a different team at JCM is in charge of this.
“We created JCM Asia a few years ago specifically to address the needs of the region. In the past, we may have underserved the needs of Asia. Today we have offices in Thailand, Taiwan, in mainland China, in Sydney, Australia. And we do everything from gaming, which is still our No. 1 industry, to banking and other industries, and we have service networks all the way from India, Malaysia, Indonesia, to service our customers no matter where the products end up.
