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Ask Tangam: What are the best KPIs to measure your staff performance for dynamic yielding?

Mar 15, 2023

This blog is specific to a question from our community based on Tangam’s TYM Live product but some of the content and general best practices can be applied to any operator looking to measure staff performance.

For some additional context, our Table Games Yield Management (TYM) platform, is a tool that helps the frontline operations staff make better, data-driven decisions when managing the floor. These come in the form of recommendations to help with pricing or table game spread. Ultimately, these prompts are meant to improve the guest experience and, more importantly, the bottom line.

Casino Management often expects that their Floor Managers will adjust spreads and pricing as demand changes. Through these decisions, operations can have a material impact on the financial performance of a business; at Tangam, we often say that Floor Managers are also Revenue Managers. For management, the question becomes how do I measure the effectiveness of these decisions? And how do I maintain consistency across a large team?

In this Ask Tangam, we will talk about the key KPIs for measuring your team’s progress and strategies for improving their performance.

KPIs - What should you measure

There are 3 main KPIs in TYM Live that measure the effectiveness of your team’s dynamic management of the floor. We consistently see that clients who do well with these KPIs generate better ROI.

  1. Logged in Rate. Recommended benchmark 90% - You can’t use TYM if you’re not logged in! This metric simply measures the percentage of recommendations where someone was logged in when the recommendation occurred.
  2. Reviewed Rate. Recommended benchmark 80% - The reviewed rate measures the percentage of recommendations that were accepted, rejected, or commented on by a user. This metric is how you track whether your team has actually seen and considered the recommendation.
  3. Applied Rate. Recommended benchmark 50% - The final step when using TYM happens outside the software: implementing the recommendation on your floor. The applied rate measures how many recommendations were implemented as a percentage of the total recommendations. It does this by checking your table management system to see if a change was made (e.g. was a table priced up or not?). 

Two important aspects to the Applied Rate make it an effective KPI. First, it prevents any gaming of the system because the software determines whether a recommendation is applied, not the user. A common misconception is that by “accepting” a recommendation, it will be marked as applied, which is not the case. 

Second, we understand that not all recommendations should be applied. We acknowledge that sometimes there are operational constraints, such as the availability of labor, customers playing as a group, or other factors that may make it impossible or inappropriate to apply a given recommendation. This is the reason why we set a benchmark of 50%.

Let’s take a look at these KPIs and how they were trending before and after a TYM Live implementation.

All three of these KPIs must be worked to reach the full potential of profitability offered by dynamically yielding the floor. Given that the value for the operator is in applying recommendations, it’s tempting to focus first on the applied rates. However, if the team isn’t reviewing recommendations, they are less likely to apply recommendations because they aren’t aware of them. Similarly, if the team isn’t logged in to TYM they aren’t going to be able to review recommendations that are being generated. It is always the case that if you can generate improvements in logged-in and reviewed rates, there is a natural improvement in applied rate.

Strategies for Improving and Maintaining Performance

Tracking KPIs and identifying performance trends is the easy part. The challenge is implementing a strategy for improving or maintaining performance. Drawing on our experience from working with clients and as operators, we have identified some strategies that consistently generate results.

Initial Implementation

This is where you are looking to develop the skills and knowledge of your team to maximize adoption. Here are a few effective strategies:

  • The first step is to set the Expectation! In all aspects, the team must be aware of how they are expected to perform their job. We have found that when there is leadership that clearly communicates the benefits of TYM usage and sets expectations, this generates better engagement with the product. 
  • Knowledge is power! An educated workforce can more appropriately apply the yielding principles if they understand them. Too often we see behavior change due to a lack of understanding on the calculation of table profitability. A full table is not necessarily a more profitable table. Questions and feedback should be encouraged.
  • Training. This is a no-brainer. If you are adding any tools for the floor to help in their decision-making, training is a must, especially if you have a large team and need to be able to have consistency in your decision-making. All new clients receive comprehensive training from Tangam and have access to online learning to support this.
  • Nominate Champion(s). Designate one or more staff members that will champion the usage and application of the training. Importantly, these individuals need to be respected in the organization and be backed by management, so when they provide coaching it will be effective. 
  • Reporting and Celebrating Success. It is important as time goes on that some reporting is communicated throughout the organization. This demonstrates to the team that this is important to the Company's leadership and part of the expectations of the job. Initially, there should be a conscious effort to share positive examples of how staff efforts contribute to revenue growth and the success of the business.

Business as Usual

Now that the team is using a tool that is integrated with the daily activities of the operations staff, there are different challenges. We have encountered situations where, after the early successes were celebrated, the focus dissipated over time and all of the Logged In, Reviewed and Applied KPIs decreased. Here are some longer-term strategies that should be considered:

  • Continue Reporting. We suggest a monthly cadence, but continued visibility of these KPIs from the front line to management will ensure that questions are raised.
  • Make people accountable. Once the entire team is up to speed, it is no longer a large-scale effort to make any significant impact to the Applied rates, but rather focus on individual performance.
  • Continued Training. Ensure that new staff is trained at the same level as the initial implementation. Often this is missed and performance declines as the workforce changes because they don’t understand the principles of yield management or how to use the software. Consider a refresher training every few years if appropriate.
  • Incorporate KPIs. Personal KPIs and performance reviews are the ultimate measures of how well an individual does their job. Incorporating TYM usage into the overall job performance KPIs can be a great way to motivate individuals to use the tool more effectively.

Conclusion

When it comes to implementing a dynamic yielding strategy on the gaming floor, effectiveness and consistency are critical. We have discussed the important KPIs for measuring this as well as strategies for generating short and long-term success. 

We love hearing from you and we wanted to thank the Pit Manager who has recently assumed the role of TYM Champion for his question! We're passionate about sharing our knowledge and expertise in gaming optimization and strategy. You are just a couple of clicks away from submitting your own "Ask Tangam" questions!

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Author(s)

Patrick Denis

As the Director of Analysis and Optimization at Tangam Systems, Patrick has been helping clients for over a decade to understand and solve their business challenges and drive performance improvements for their table games operation. He earned a Bachelor of Computer Science at Ryerson University and a Master of Science specializing in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence at one of the top programs at York University.

Jeremy Hirst

Jeremy brings over a decade of casino expertise in analytics and optimisation across table games, electronic gaming, and marketing. As the Director of Casino Optimisation and Analytics, Jeremy works with clients from all over the world, sharing best practices for applying data-driven insights to optimise gaming performance.

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Director of Enterprise Analytics

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Mohegan Sun

"Extending our partnership with Tangam to our full gaming operation, including tables and slots, was a no-brainer given Tangam's proven track record of business support."

Jeff Hamilton

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President and General Manager at Mohegan Sun

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Sycuan Casino Resort

"Sycuan is dedicated to providing an enhanced gaming experience for our patrons. By deploying powerful prescriptive analytics tools such as TYM and SODA, our operations and analytics teams are able to get data-driven insights at the right times to drive value to our business."

Douglas Vogelei

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Senior Vice President of Casino Operations

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The Star - Sydney

“Due to our ongoing success with Tangam at Sydney, we’re able to deliver the right product at the right time, leading to improvements in efficiency, transparency, decision-making and our bottom line.”

David Croft

,

General Manager Product & Strategy

View Press Release

The Star - Sydney

“Due to our ongoing success with Tangam at Sydney, we’re able to deliver the right product at the right time, leading to improvements in efficiency, transparency, decision-making and our bottom line.”

David Croft

,

General Manager Product & Strategy

View Press Release

Mohegan Sun

“We’d like to thank the exceptional team at Tangam Systems for what has been a very successful implementation that we undertook together. We immediately saw positive returns and an improved guest experience. Our team is very much looking forward to continue leveraging Tangam and all it has to offer from a floor optimization standpoint.”

Kevin Lowry

,

Vice President and CFO

View Press Release
Read All Testimonials

What Clients Say About Us

Caesars Entertainment

“[Tangam’s] real-time data gives us a deeper insight that allows us to quickly adjust to customer needs, while also establishing new business goals and tracking the success of our strategy.”

Melissa Price

,

SVP of Corporate Gaming

View Press Release

Mohegan Sun

“Reporting alone doesn't provide answers. We chose SODA for its highly differentiated offering that provides a clear set of actionable recommendations, which maximize gaming performance and the guest experience.”

Jeff Hamilton

,

President and General Manager

View Press Release

Sycuan Casino Resort

“During our initial trial, it was amazing to see how quickly we were able to get to the answers in our data through the lens of SODA. This truly made analytics available to anyone - with intelligent recommendations, intuitive visualizations and seamless drill-downs. We are equally excited about the product roadmap over the coming months.”

Sierra Weyer

,

Director of Enterprise Analytics

View Press Release

Mohegan Sun

"Extending our partnership with Tangam to our full gaming operation, including tables and slots, was a no-brainer given Tangam's proven track record of business support."

Jeff Hamilton

,

President and General Manager at Mohegan Sun

View Press Release

Sycuan Casino Resort

"Sycuan is dedicated to providing an enhanced gaming experience for our patrons. By deploying powerful prescriptive analytics tools such as TYM and SODA, our operations and analytics teams are able to get data-driven insights at the right times to drive value to our business."

Douglas Vogelei

,

Senior Vice President of Casino Operations

View Press Release

The Star - Sydney

“Due to our ongoing success with Tangam at Sydney, we’re able to deliver the right product at the right time, leading to improvements in efficiency, transparency, decision-making and our bottom line.”

David Croft

,

General Manager Product & Strategy

View Press Release

Mohegan Sun

“We’d like to thank the exceptional team at Tangam Systems for what has been a very successful implementation that we undertook together. We immediately saw positive returns and an improved guest experience. Our team is very much looking forward to continue leveraging Tangam and all it has to offer from a floor optimization standpoint.”

Kevin Lowry

,

Vice President and CFO

View Press Release
Read All Testimonials