SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Vermantia Chief Technology Officer Menelaos Ladopoulos sits down with SBC News to discuss the firm’s latest Digital Signage product launch, Vision 3.0 by Vermantia, that has proven popular in Italy and is making its way to the top of all tier one European retail operators.
SBC News: What differentiates Vermantia and more specifically the technological department that you foresee?
Menelaos Ladopoulos: At Vermantia, our goal is to stay at the forefront of innovation in the industry and deliver high-quality solutions to our customers. We pride ourselves on delivering high-level services that go beyond just having cutting-edge technology. Our team is composed of hand-picked professionals who are experts in their field and understand the needs of our customers. This team is dedicated to providing solutions that exceed expectations. We make it our mission to anticipate potential challenges and offer innovative solutions that not only make our customers’ lives easier but also enhance overall user experience.
Our success lies in our ability to foster strong relationships with our customers and truly understand their needs. By doing so, we can tailor our approach to each client and ensure that we provide a superior service. Ultimately, our goal is to deliver products and services that not only meet but exceed our customers’ expectations. We strive to achieve this every day through a combination of technical excellence and exceptional customer service.
SBC: What is Vision 3.0 and what solution does it seek to offer retail betting shops?
ML: Vision 3.0 is the finest, fully-integrated solution for centralised management and monitoring. Bundled with full functions for advanced management, intelligent detection, flexible scheduled recording, quick event search, and supported for quick and convenient multi-site surveillance, our Digital Signage Solution is the most powerful tool for every retailer’s demand. Vision 3.0 brings together flexible and efficient operation, faster setup and system recovery, and highly intuitive content creation and management capabilities to help businesses unlock the powerful potential of business displays.
SBC: How crucial is it for operators to possess a robust and reliable Digital Signage solution?
ML: By working closely with operators for over 15 years we have come to the point of anticipating their needs and working ahead of time in creating solutions that will assist in their day-to-day retail operations. Combining our knowledge of multiple retail operator technologies into a pioneering solution, giving complete control over the shop display and by creating content tailored to specific promotion purposes, operators can create brand awareness and drive increased sales. With third-party ads presented additional revenue can be generated. Plus, all that content can be managed seamlessly across a variety of locations and devices from anywhere around the globe.
SBC: What makes Vision 3.0 stand out from the competition and how does it differentiate from other Digital Signage products available on the market?
ML: After extensive research, we came to realise that there was no Digital Signage available in the betting and gaming market, specifically tailored to this industry. Thus, even though there are Digital Signage Solutions available, none cover a retail operator end-to-end understanding both the operator needs and how the industry works.
Vision 3.0 has a fully customisable and user-friendly back office, with a web-based management for both server and player, a multi client, multi user support. It also supports all media files such as still images, full HD video, flash animation, sound, webpages, weather, currency exchange, RSS feeds, streaming video and social media integration, with a fully localised content from each country, city, store, monitor, advanced remote and scheduled hardware control, remote and centralised management of unlimited players supporting load distribution scaling. And these are just some of the benefits that are included.
SBC: Customisation is one of the key features of Vision 3.0. How does this aid operators and how much flexibility do they have to cater to individual bettors?
ML: With Vision 3.0 the operator has the freedom to control and manage their entire retail network display. All media and all video files at the operator’s service. Fully customisable, digital advertising and promotions, centralised queue management, interactive product catalogues & menu boards, entertainment / infotainment, public information systems (e.g. Transportation, Currencies, Stocks, Cinema etc.). Each of these highlights can be customised to an operator’s needs and adjusted as required with an extremely user-friendly back office that will allow full control of their Digital Signage Solution even via phone.
Each operator has different needs, so does their end customer, Vision 3.0 can accommodate those needs and offer a bespoke solution to every operator.
SBC: Online betting has taken a lot of the headlines away from retail betting in recent years. How can customisable and engaging tech products help improve the retail experience and keep betting shops competitive?
ML: With the technological and internet expansion, it was only natural for online betting to follow and take leaps in advancing its product at great speed. Even though online betting has the advantage of being accessible anywhere and anytime, it cannot compete with the thrill and excitement someone has in the retail experience. Thus, we can consider them now as two different products that have similar audiences, but can co-exist in the same industry, still competitive though.
As retail suppliers we want to make sure our partners always offer the latest and most thrilling products in terms of technology that will still engage their customers, making their in-shop experience exciting. This was the basis of Vision 3.0, to enrich the display capabilities of retail shops to keep player satisfaction high and at the same time keep it user friendly for the operator.
SBC: What does the future look in terms of new tech-products in the Vermantia pipeline?
ML: It is in our nature as a tech-oriented company to always seek our new project that will take our offering a step further. With Vision 3.0 already being recognized by our biggest partners and taking the market by storm we could not be prouder. Vision 3.0 is now up and running in the Italian market and will soon be live in other countries as well changing the way operators control and manage their display.
Vermantia has been busy setting up several partnerships that will produce new products and create new needs for us to fill with our expertise and we are excited to do so. The future in terms of technology is always exciting as, with AI, we will be able incorporate more and faster solutions to our offering. Stay tuned.
