Automated Responsible Gambling in the Spotlight

Automation isn’t a new thought. It dates back to the 16^th century and has emerged in different industries and work processes since, from heavy industrial machinery and robot-driven assembling lines to now self-driving cars. One of the main drivers of automation is the productivity increase and the time saving that results from tedious manual work being automated.

Automation is also relevant for the gambling industry and particularly helpful in responsible gambling. With the vast amounts of data that gambling generates at operator sights, applying automated procedures to sift through data have their justification and almost seem to be a no-brainer to implement. But, apart from the obvious benefits of more time efficient data handling, what are the advantages?

There are quite a few advantages that automating player profiling and monitoring leverages. Looking at the bigger picture, it allows for a bird’s eye view of the entire gambling database, showing the general health of gamblers – how many gamblers are safe, at-risk and problem gamblers. It further gives insight into changes and tendencies in behavior, game preferences etc. either for certain demographics or for the entire database over time. It can also be used as a measurement tool to track changes after campaigns, targeted at certain player groups, demographics or again the entire database.

From quite a few operators we’ve heard that manual data extraction and preparation for analysis is extremely time consuming. One thing is the cost of manpower to pre-process data, but another and more important improvement automation offers is the timely detection of at-risk and problem gamblers. Time and early detection are of the essence to protect gamblers from gambling related harm. Through automation constant monitoring is taking place which allows for the timely identification of at-risk and problem gamblers. This allows for shifting time used for manual data pre-processing to more strategic RG work and intervention.

At the player-specific level, automation can keep track of behavioral changes during gambling over time and pinpoint problematic combinations of risky gambling behavior. Not only can automated processes raise the flag when gambling behavior starts to deviate, but also simplify the process of identifying who is and who isn’t a problem gamblers which in itself is a complex task as it involves many different parameters to be taken into account.

Automation has a consistency that is impossible for humans to keep up with. It doesn’t get tired, have a bad day or make mistakes – instead automation is tireless, steady and reliable. It can keep track of tremendous amounts of data that allows for detecting patterns that were previously hidden from human analysis. The human ability to recognize patterns has its limits compared to automated processes. Humans can’t grasp as much information at once – both tracking changes over time, taking many different aspects and their interrelations into account and counting in the demographics of a specific player.

The real value from automation lies in the insights, unveiling patterns invisible to the human eye. Not only do we see new patterns, we also see them sooner and in time for intervention. With a deeper understanding of what is going on, the results of automation are a major asset that can be translated into customer protection and overall business strategy.

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