The Essential Guide to Your FEC’s Transformational Growth

SaaS solutions pertain to connecting and using cloud-based apps over the internet to run FEC operations such as payments, customer data, and sales. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of SaaS platforms and solutions to meet the consumer demand for faster and safer transactions and ways to engage with businesses.

It is no secret anymore that SaaS solutions drive transformational growth, given how cashless has become the norm. 90% of consumers now prefer to pay with credit or with a debit card over cash according to a study. According to Forbes, 83% of consumers prefer cashless payments, and when they do, they tend to spend more.

Part of your solutions provider’s customer success strategy plan for your FEC should include the drive for the fast adoption of SaaS solutions. Innovations like this will future-proof your business through a total transformation of how you do your daily operations.

For instance, with the Mobile Wallet – the only Apple and Google-certified FEC solution in the industry – you can get a dramatic increase in profitability without breaking the bank. 2022-2023 Mobile Wallet metric results from Embed customers show a whopping 5x increase in average reload value ($50.57) versus cash ($9.90) and credit card ($31.95). That’s a quick ROI from such a small investment on a monthly subscription – covered in easily 1 or 2 reloads.

Other than profitability, SaaS solutions give you an upper hand in terms of operational efficiency versus your competitors. Instead of queuing onsite and increasing the likelihood of guests walking out the door, the Mobile Wallet enables 60% of reloads to happen even before guests arrive at your venue. This feature is perfect for parents who want to monitor how much their children are spending, eradicates the possibility of theft, and gives the consumer full control of the gaming experience, unbothered by the need to leave the game to top up.

Because your guests waste no time going to a reload or redemption counter, they tend to spend more. The time you and your staff will spend on processing cashless payments from SaaS solutions like the Mobile Wallet takes visibly 0 hours versus 10 hours for cash and 3.33 hours for credit card payments (based on $100,000).

Another factor why SaaS solutions are an important pillar of an FEC’s blueprint for success is data collection. With tech like the Mobile Wallet, you can get rich customer data that will give you visibility over their visits, spending habits, and frequently played games. This will allow you to tailor hyper-personalised, high-value, and low-cost offers and experiences for them.

A business intelligence or data visualisation dashboard is another SaaS solution that your business system provider could advise you to leverage. One hindrance to your FEC’s success is when you’re unable to get the most out of the data you have. A lot of operational problems can be fixed by simply running the numbers and generating actionable insights from those.

Research shows that staff who are assigned data analytics work spend 90% of the workweek on nitty-gritty data-related tasks – and this does not include the analysis required to gain actual insights that drive business decisions. Reports can now be generated and automated in just a few clicks, compared to manual data labour – making it prone to human error and miscalculation. Smart analytics tools and scheduled reporting free you and your staff up of time-consuming data churn.

Data visualisation tools are effective platforms for deriving insights out of raw reports. Graphs help show patterns and pain points faster so you can make real-time business decisions, making a positive impact on the guest experience.

STATS, a business intelligence dashboard powered by Amazon Web Services, gets the data work done. This helps operators like you have real-time visibility to FEC data like game performance, revenue prediction based on retro data, inventory, and even manpower allocation.

Contrary to some notions, even small-medium FECs can benefit from SaaS solutions like STATS. Other cloud-based technologies are game-changers not just for multi-location FECs with various consumer touchpoints but are also proven effective for single-location businesses. When maximised to their fullest potential, SaaS solutions can be the key to growing your single location to a multi.

Case in point: Oregon-based Game Over Arcade has been in the business for 10 years. After going cashless, husband-and-wife duo Chris and Jennifer Donner saw significant growth: "60% revenue increase vs. our best years when we were open 7 days a week with full staff - that’s how profitable we are now operating only 4 days a week with Embed’s cashless system.” Game Over Arcade runs Mobile Wallet and STATS and is soon to open a second facility while just in their second year since going cashless: “We started doing redemption in 2022 and it’s really stepped our game further. In April 2023, we bought a new property. We’ve been renovating and, in a few months, we’re going to have it opened,” shares Chris Donner.

It’s also important to note that your solutions provider should have not only the latest SaaS solutions available to you but the most reliable one as well. For instance, it’s actually possible for you not to experience FEC data centre outages in your location if your solutions provider is backed up by a reliable tech partner. It would be difficult for your business to succeed if you experience downtimes on a regular basis.

Data centre outages cause:
•    Operational and management stress; the possibility of higher employee turnover
•    A poor guest experience that discourages customer retention
•    Losing revenue especially when occurring on weekends, holidays, or peak hours
•    Permanent damage to your FEC's brand

Remember that a reliable cashless system's architecture should be designed to boost your profitability even when your network is down. No matter how promising a SaaS solution provider is, checking the reputation of their cloud platform partner will lead you to the right decision.

Guests now expect faster, easier, and safer ways to transact with businesses, and this paved the way for the huge uptick in the adoption of cashless payments. Accepting cash payments is 3x more expensive to handle and process versus card payments according to an IHL Group study. That means lower costs for you, in addition to increased profitability as consumer preference leans towards credit or debit card mode of payment over cash and tends to spend more when paying using cashless methods.

Your guests’ satisfaction is only as good as the training you and your staff receive on a regular basis. Gallup, the workplace consulting and global research group, found that businesses that put a premium in employee development like training see 11% greater profitability. 

As you are equipping your business with SaaS solutions that drive transformational growth and allow scalability and getting better rates for your payment processing, you will begin to see the results to your operational efficiency, affecting the overall guest experience. You can guarantee that these are sustained with highly trained staff, another pillar of an FEC’s blueprint for success. 

Because of the ease of operations SaaS solutions bring, your manpower is freed up from nitty-gritty manual tasks such as manning counters or troubleshooting token or ticket jams. They have more time on their hands to actually focus on guests. Now, what do we do with all that extra time?

With new solutions in place, onboarding your staff to the new system needs to go beyond plug-and-play. Aside from the basics of installation and troubleshooting, you’ll need cross-functional staff that are not only operators of your games and attractions but are the ambassadors of the system that run your business.

To produce highly trained staff, you’ll need ongoing training. Well-trained staff provide superior customer service that increases satisfaction and loyalty among FEC guests. 42% of consumers would pay more for a friendly and welcoming experience. Running an FEC is a full-time job – so how exactly can an operator invest time, money, and continuous training opportunities for staff members? 

You probably identify specific members of your staff as your go-to, leads, or ambassadors which creates a new career/growth path for your manpower. By appointing ambassadors, you can continue running the operation while empowering your primary staff to take something off their plate and execute the top-notch training of seasonal/transient staff. Ongoing training is the key to achieve this.

No one knows your system better than your solutions provider. As your business partner, they should be able to design such opportunities for you and your staff to grow and maximise your system through regular training, instead of a one-and-done approach that will only cover the basics and not all the bases. If your business has a comprehensive training program, you’ll likely experience a 218% higher income per employee compared to those with ineffective training, a study found.

A tailor-fit ongoing training program from your solutions provider should cover different learning modalities like Somatic, Auditory, Visual, and Intellection (SAVI Model) to meet the staff in the most effective learning method for them. 

Dave & Buster’s in North America, the Veltmeijer Group in Europe, and Majid Al Futtaim Group in the Middle East – the most prominent FECs in the business – what do they have in common? 

They have a solutions provider who is more than that – one with a customer-centric approach that establishes a partnership geared towards propelling the business towards success, as opposed to being a mere technical solution supplier or vendor that’s transactional in nature.

The final and most vital pillar in an FEC’s blueprint for success is the tech partner you choose. Your solutions provider - the one who runs your systems and ensures you can take a step back from the day-to-day and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Who you partner with can either make or break your operations and your brand’s good reputation. Let’s not forget that guests wouldn’t want to visit a place that where their fun spirits are hampered by preventable downtimes, poor customer service, and a bad overall experience.

Because you put your guests at the heart of everything you do, you’ll need someone who does the same for you. You can’t make a successful B2C connection if your B2B partnership is still focused on price instead of value and insights. Here are things to look for in your solutions provider:

•    Customer success strategy plan – For a solutions provider, one Customer Success Agent/Specialist is not enough for an entire clientele with different business sizes, number of locations, needs, and goals. 

A customer success strategy plan should have more than just a generalist, jack-of-all-trades approach. Specialisation is an important part of your FEC’s success, and partnering with a solutions provider that can zoom in on specific areas for improvement in your business is a strategy on its own. In software development, this is similar to the scrum methodology, wherein you collaborate closely with different specialists and experts from your solutions provider’s teams in an agile approach to achieve your goals faster and more effectively.

Instead of focusing on a straightforward lifecycle to onboard, engage, and renew the solutions that run your system, a good customer success strategy plan from a solutions provider should have specialty roles with focused areas, deep expertise, and narrowly defined responsibilities from the team you’re going to be working with.

•    Dedicated customer success team – There is no greater testament to a solutions provider’s customer-centricity than hiring a dedicated team of specialists, experts, and gurus to add greater value on top of products, solutions, and service. When a solutions provider focuses on their customers’ transformative business growth through greater revenue, profit, and low manpower, 

This is exactly why Embed formed the Success Squad™ - a team with a single-minded aim of helping their customers succeed. A team of consultants, champions, and trainers - a mix of growth gurus, SaaS experts, and payment gateway specialists band together to drive transformational growth to FECs through the adoption of the Mobile Wallet. 

•    Tools for success – Your solutions provider’s relationship with your business should now go beyond selling you a product. Equipping you with tools for success ensures that your system is maximised to its fullest potential, giving you the best possible results to grow your business.